


Love in the Time of Science

by ellymelly



Series: Untold Sanctuary [1]
Category: Sanctuary (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-19
Updated: 2014-01-03
Packaged: 2017-12-24 00:39:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 31,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/933077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellymelly/pseuds/ellymelly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Over a hundred years ago, five students clashed inside the walls of Oxford University. A desire for knowledge stirred within each of them as they pushed the boundaries of the natural world and of each other. This is the story of the Vampires, the Immortals, the Cabal and The Five - who stumbled into their ancient web.</p>
<p>I invite all grammar and editing suggestions on this copy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Storms and Lecture Notes

 

* * *

_“Our first endeavours are purely instinctive, promptings of an imagination vivid and undisciplined ... but those early impulses, tho not immediately productive, are of the greatest moment and may shape our very destinies.” – Nikola Tesla_

* * *

 

**STORMS AND LECTURE NOTES**

 

**OXFORD, 1885**

A ruffle of wings settled on the window. Their blur of white faded from the air as the creature turned its elegant head and nestled its beak between layers of feathers, knocking rain free.

The storm over Oxford hadn’t decided what to do, so instead it loomed, slowly grazing over the twinkling gas-lit streets. Their glow was just enough to light the underside of the storm in the absence of starlight.

A pair of bright eyes watched the sky, scanning the clouds as they rolled through each other. He could feel their friction and smell the droplets of water tumbling – ripping electrons free as they rose and fell in a maddening struggle. It was a scene alive with expectancy, like two lovers drawn apart, desperate to rejoin in what could only be a beautiful disaster.

He breathed in the energy, waiting for –

– a river of light cut through the heavens and dove into the earth with perfect silence.

The air around it burned.

Expanded.

And began reverberating through the sky towards his window.

Nikola Tesla felt the world shudder.

His shutters rattled and the pigeon hopped onto his outstretched arm in a frightened flutter, clawing its way along his suit.

“ _Sh...”_ he cooed, tracing a finger down the back of its neck. It nipped him affectionately. “This is the best part.”

“You’ll catch something from that thing,” Helen climbed into the university’s attic, sitting on the floorboards before swinging her legs up through the hole in the floor.

“I thought I told you not to come up here?” he replied, as he gazed at the violence.

“You say that every day but you never mean it,” she closed the hatch and strolled over to the window, keeping her distance from the stray bird scaling Nikola’s shoulder. There was a storm raging over the city but it was yet to reach them. She could feel its cool wind kicking through the open window onto their faces. “We have evening class tonight.”

Tesla lifted a thick eyebrow. “You are here because?”

Helen shook her head, turning her back on the window. Nikola had transformed the attic into a dormitory. A bed was pushed against the far side of the misshapen room – meticulously made. The rest of the space he had proceeded to fill with whatever he could scavenge from the engineering laboratories. Mostly it comprised a concoction of wire – bundles and bundles of it.

“I’m here because I was the only fool our lecturer could convince to come and retrieve you from this cave of yours.”

“Come here...”

She frowned. “Not if you-” but realised her mistake, Nikola was talking to the pigeon. Helen watched as he cupped the creature in his hands and knelt down onto the floor, as if hiding from something.

A moment later Helen screamed but no-one heard it above the roar that shattered the windows. She fell to the ground amid a hail of glass, holding her ears and slamming her eyes shut as the small room became a beacon of light. The accompanying thunder pounded through her soul until she thought it would break.

Suddenly, there was nothing.

She opened her eyes to a ball of light several feet across, spinning slowly in the centre of the room. It shimmered, tiny shards of lightning branching off. The sphere’s surface pulsed with burning veins that hummed in and out of brightness as though this were a living creature birthed to the world in a surge of mayhem.

The ball-lightning didn’t stay suspended for long. At length it rolled lazily through the air toward the window. Helen had to leap out of the way as it collided with a solid wall – dissipated and vanished.

The room was returned to darkness. Helen turned her head to Nikola’s quiet laugh. He opened his palms and the pigeon flew out into the storm just as the first sheet of rain hit the walls.

“Can we go now?” Helen hissed, clearly frightened by his little show.

Rain speckled his cheeks as he nodded and pushed what remained of the windows closed. “Indeed. I’m done.”

A young Helen Magnus blocked his path, hands settled on her hips just below the cinched waist of her gown. “You’ll be well and truly _done_ when they university finds out you put a lightning rod on the roof!” she grabbed his sleeve and tugged him along. “And don't get me started on the stolen wire.”

 

* * *

 

Night class was easily the most poorly attended of all the physical science classes. A quick turn about the room made its avoidance plain.

The lecturer, stunted and balanced on a high stool at the front of the room, slanted over the black board scratching illegible diagrams in-between a series of annotations that lacked internal consistency.

By default, the front bench was left empty.

It wasn’t that the few students who bothered to show up disliked being close to the board, or feared looking too keen. Indeed, in different circumstances the perfectly amiable seating would have been ideal if only to stand a chance at deciphering the board. However, in this case the stench leaching out of the lecturer’s jacket was almost visible on the air. Like a noxious gas, it kept students at a safe distance.

A rumble of thunder woke Nigel Griffin. Snorting, he rubbed a hooked nose on his sleeve and nestled his head back in the warm ditch of his arm. Several of his books were considering a leap of faith from the desk but there was one book the world would never take from him; his diary. It was not because he kept secrets in it – he was not a particularly secretive person – no, this book contained a detailed list of all his appointments and lesson times, observations and ramblings of the world. In his first year, he’d misplaced this book, spent the day wandering around in a lost state and finally ended up locked in a cupboard. Not something he was keen to repeat.

At the back, right corner sat the rigid figure of James. Unlike the others who were either asleep or scribbling madly, James Watson narrowed his eyes and observed his peers. Every so often he tilted his head, changing subjects. The lecture board continued to fill but he didn’t feel the need to lift his feathered pen for there were far more interesting things afoot than the eternal motion of the planets.

The twin doors of the lecture room flew open with a gush of wind, startling those that had been napping. A young woman with a dishevelled mop of golden hair dragged a wiry gentleman behind her, depositing him in the nearest seat. She nodded at the lecturer and then collapsed next to Tesla, opening her book where she quickly set to work copying the board.

Nikola rolled his eyes, spun around so that he was lying lengthways across the bench and promptly went to sleep with his head irritatingly in her lap. Helen ignored him, brushing her hair out of the way.

“Mr Tesla?” The lecturer had stopped writing to stare expectantly at the empty section of bench hiding Tesla.

“Yes, sir?” came the half muffled, mostly bored response.

“You wouldn’t happen to know anything about a bolt of lightning hitting the south end of the building, would you?” His very large, white eyebrows furrowed. The lecturer knew that the young boy was fascinated by the sheer intrigue of raw current – with good reason. He had what could only be described as affection for it; a relationship that was proving dangerous for the integrity of the building.

There was a long silence in response. The lecturer shook his head slowly and returned to the board.

“Let me know if you remember...” he muttered, selecting a new piece of chalk.

Nikola, blissfully looking forward to his sleep, shut his eyes and started planning frictionless power systems. He’d just managed a smile when all the air was forced out of his lungs by the sudden impact of a heavy book on his chest. Coughing, he sat up with a start.

“What the...” there was a sizable text book in his lap.

“Niiice of you to join us,” a deep voice undulated over the air. It belonged to a tall, strong-cut face with a square chin and deep brown eyes. Eyes which trailed to Helen, hovered there for a moment and then returned to Nikola's shocked facade.

“And who are you?” Nikola dusted off the book and laid it on the bench. He coughed again and then groaned, feeling his skin burn from the impact.

“I’m new,” replied John. “Well, not that new. This is my fourth class but the first one that you’ve attended since I started. Helen said that I should return your textbook and thank you for its use.”

Nikola opened the cover and saw that it was, indeed, his. Not that he’d opened it. His name was written in Helen’s careful handwriting.

“Thank you John,” whispered Helen, risking a glance.

“You lent him my book?” Nikola frowned, lowering his voice so that the ominous student couldn’t hear.

“Don’t worry, I relocated the spiders nesting on it,” she smirked. “It’s not like you missed it, Nikola. Now _quiet_ , I have to get all this down.”

“It’s rubbish anyway,” Tesla shifted the book to the side as he scanned the board. “There’s a new theory about to be published that shows the earth is _much_ older than that.”

“Maybe but right now I need you to stop speaking.” She prodded him with the tip of her quill, which hurt quite a bit more than she meant it to.

It worked though. For at least two minutes Nikola did not say a word.

“Helen?”

“Sh...”

“Can I plagiarise your assignment on _Inheritance and Mendal_?” he inched in a bit, rocking ever so slightly until Helen flicked her damp hair over her shoulder and glared. “That’d be a _no_ then,” he sighed, making the bench back into a bed.

 

* * *

 

Helen’s essay on _Inheritance and Mendal_ mysteriously made its way into Tesla’s attic accommodation several days later where it was promptly skimmed, re-worded and presented in class where it received a B-.

According to the lecturer, Nikola had been marked on his ability to _acquire_ answers discreetly.

James Watson, a creature who Nikola rarely spoke to except to taunt, held his own paper up so that its _A_ was glaringly obvious.

“Your motor still bursting into flames?” inquired Tesla casually, ripping his own assignment into a thousand pieces.

James seldom bothered with more than one word, “Presently.”

“Excellent news. Let me know when your life goes up in smoke.” He tipped his hat and headed out the main doors to the garden.

Watson watched the strange man vanish into the morning. “Indeed...”

He was about to waltz off down to the dining hall when something beautiful caught his eye. Miss Helen Magnus, daughter of the currently discredited but once well-thought-of physician, was making her way toward him. At first he thought he must have been inadvertently standing in the way of her target but every time he took a subtle step she realigned her trajectory.

“’scuse me,” she started, quite out of breath.

He’d never spoken to her before now, except when handing out things in class and that one time they’d said an awkward, ‘good day’ in the corridor. James tried to look as pleasant as he could, shaking off his usual icy disposition and general dislike of conversation.

“Yes?” he managed, slipping his brass glasses into a more stable position, higher up the bridge of his nose.

Helen’s hands settled on her hips as she caught her breath. “I’m not wanting to disturb you,” she began, albeit a little suspiciously, “but – I was – wondering. You’re good at anatomy, if I remember?”

Not the first question he thought he’d be asked by the daughter of a doctor. “Presumably.”

“Would I be able to borrow you, for a little while? No more than an hour or so. If you have the time, of course.”

James clasped his gloved hands behind his back and nodded, curiosity getting the better of him.

 


	2. Universe in the Lake

**UNIVERSE IN THE LAKE**

 

James Watson re-crossed his legs, collecting his things into a neat pile beside the table.

The university library was a conglomerate of too many years spent tacking buildings onto one another without the slightest nod to style. This haphazard maze was divided into two main sections known to the students colourfully as, ‘old’ and ‘new’. Anything vulgar built within the last fifty years fell into the latter category.

The _old_ section was where James preferred to spend his precious time. He liked the sandstone walls, tinted green from centuries of rain and moss – it wasn’t attractive but they brimmed with character. Its aisles were cave like, dwarfed by thousands of books recording a history of human thought. Gothic chandeliers were strung between the towering bookshelves where a single librarian sorted through a trolley of books, painstakingly ordering them onto the shelves.

Today, however, he had been dragged to the _new_ section of the library. It was bustling with near-sighted students snerching books from the shelves and piling them into towers on their friends’ arms. James raised his nose. The smell of varnish and ink permeated the air and tested his patience as he waited for Miss Magnus to return from the cabinet housing recently published papers.

“Still alive,” he made the observation of himself, when she finally returned.

Helen Magnus held several folders tied together with green and gold ribbon.

“They don’t like us borrowing these,” she began, sliding them onto the dark wood table before taking her seat opposite. “New publications except for this one,” her finger tapped the folder on top, “unpublished work by one of the university patrons. We’re _especially_ not allowed to borrow this.”

His eyes tracked over the name on the cover, _‘Karl Landsteiner – On Red Blood Cells’._ James had never borrowed anything from the library before, so this restriction did not concern him.

Helen undid the ribbon and gently spread the folder’s contents into a fan as you would a pack of cards. They were roughly printed on fine tissue-like paper with sketchy diagrams and hand-written annotations scattered throughout the text. Hesitantly, she folded her arms onto the table and leant toward James, searching him for something.

He stared curiously back with mellowed-brown eyes. A casual passer would not guess their sharpness but Helen was no casual bystander.

“I’ve been working on something for a while,” she said softly, “but I am wise enough to recognise my limits. The subject which intrigues me is young to the world and so the information I have been able to acquire is either scattered, incomplete or contradictory. Truth is, I need someone who has spent time on their own investigation of the subject matter.”

He wondered how she had known.

“Like me?” he replied, his voice softening to silk.

“ _Exactly_ like you.”

Helen Magnus had surprised James Watson already. His private obsession into the workings of the human body was not public knowledge.

“You intrigue me, Miss Magnus.”

“ _Helen_ , please,” she corrected him.

“ _Helen,_ then. You have my attention but not my trust. Frontiers of science are often a viper pit and my good sense is telling me that you are a cunning participant in the workings of the world.” James paused. “However,” he added with a smile when he saw that she did not flinch at the accusation, “there are worse partners to be had. I would like to know one thing before I agree to help you. How did you find out about me?”

Her eyes shone.

“That was easy, my dear Watson. Someone has been borrowing the campus’s supply of glassware – that, and I cornered your dorm-mate, Mr Griffin, in the corridor.”

“Secrets do not become him,” said Watson of poor Nigel. “The universe has entrusted him with the awful burden of honesty and no way to hide it.”

 

* * *

 

Nikola found himself hovering over a small stream trickling its way around the rocks at the front of the university. He followed it through hedges and encroaching lawns all the way around the side of the building and out into the rear gardens where it ended in a freezing pond.

The back of the university looked like a long, blonde-stone rectangle lounging on the iridescent green slope. Several floors high, it was dominated by a library at its centre with sweeping iron windows and Juliet balconies.

The garden was hemmed in by the city on all sides whose noise and dirt was kept at bay by a cast-iron fence too tall to scale and capped in fleur-de-lis. A planting of plane trees hid most of the city in the warm seasons with their dense branches of soft foliage. It was nothing like home but Tesla preferred it to the building.

He glanced back at the rock prison with a grin when he saw the shattered windows and singed stone from the lightning strike. It would take them some time to dismantle the lightning rod adhered to the roof above his room.

Nikola Tesla knelt down to the eerie pond. The creek fed into it via a gentle, metre wide channel with a steady current at its centre and slow water lulling by the banks. Croaking in the long grass, Tesla could hear his prey – namely smallish green frogs. He would need at least four for his next experiment and he had just the thing to acquire them.

 

* * *

 

James shook his head to quiet Helen’s constant stream of hushed questions.

“It is not safe, in my experience, to mix the blood of species,” James flipped through Landsteiner’snotes. “This explains why it is even dangerous to attempt transfusions between humans. The success rate is a little under half – not a mortality rate that appeals to me.”

“ _Damn_ ,” Helen whispered, defeated. She had read the same thing a thousand times but she had been really hoping that the papers had been mistaken. She was about to pack up everything and vanish when James withdrew one of the folders and spun it around to face her.

“With an exception,” he said, enjoying the way her bright hair slid over her shoulders as her head snapped up. “I have found a measure of success in swine. It is an undocumented phenomenon drawn from principles in this report.”

“Could you show me?” her elbows took the brunt of her mass as she bridged the distance between them.

“Of course. I highly doubt that your motivations are sheer curiosity and I guarantee that you’ll find nothing further save mysteries until you start asking honest questions.”

Helen frowned. James Watson would not be as easily manipulated as she had hoped.

“Show me this experiment and you may ask your questions of me.”

Two great minds sized each other up and settled upon a joint disquiet.

“Tonight then,” he agreed. “My lab is always prepared. If you can stand the disorder, you are welcome to join me.”

 

* * *

 

Tesla’s frogs croaked to themselves, hopping around the woven basket that he had borrowed/stolen from Helen.

He lay on the grass, staring into the black water with an absent set of eyes. He thought about the rocks of the building grinding into dust, melting and being remade into mountains only to be pulverised at the end of the world. Then they would be a swirling cloud of particles, wandering into energy until even that dissipated – stretched to infinity. As far as he could determine, nothing was permanent in this existence. A life, memory and even the very soul was gone in the whisper of a breath.

Except for this.

Nikola sat up to watch the eddy currents swirl along the bank like tiny galaxies following the tide. He imagined the speckles of dust on the waters’ surface as the endless bank of stars sliding by and the ripples of the insects touching its tension became the propagation of gravity waves. Suddenly, what no man could ever hope to see was before him. Nikola looked at it and smiled, blowing a leaf across the water.

The scene was spoilt by a splash.

A muddy ball bobbed in the pond, destroying the subtle patterns of the water with a series of concentric waves. Tesla took hold of a nearby tree and stretched over the water until his cuff dipped into it.

“Urgh...” he muttered, dragging the ball back to the bank where he found a short, untidy student rubbing their nose in expectation. Tesla held the ball up to the snivelling creature who moved to take it, but Tesla withdrew, holding it well out of reach. “And who are you?” he asked.

The boy was visibly out of breath. Behind him, a line of others were assembling at the top of the hill, clearly waiting for the ball.

“Ni-gel,” he puffed, reaching again for the ball. “Com’on, give us the ball back.”

Tesla, who was both slender and tall, had no imminent desire to oblige him.

“I _know_ you,” he said. “Aren’t you the one that snores through late class?”

“Hey man,” Nigel Griffin replied, “at least I bother to attend.”

Tesla considered this but was sure that there was little difference between absence and snoozing. Bored of this creature, Tesla threw the ball over his head, back up to where the others were waiting.

“Run along now,” Tesla shooed the student away from his presence. When he was gone, Nikola sat back on the bank only to notice a trio of frogs hopping happily to freedom. His basket had been knocked open by the ball. “Wonderful...” he growled.

“What is?” A flurry of black lace and blonde hair settled on the grass next to him. Helen lifted her hand out of the path of an escaping frog and soon found her basket upturned and suspiciously empty. “Did you steal my basket?” she raised her accusing eyes at Nikola but he was engrossed in the stream bubbling along at their feet. “I’m going to pretend that you gave me an eloquent apology and believable excuse,” she picked up her possession, dusting the grass of its lid.

As usual, Nikola had not said a word to her. She liked that. His silence was approval. Had he wanted her gone, Nikola would have made her keenly aware of it.

“You’ll have to find your own way to class tonight,” she continued. “In my opinion, you should make an effort to be there. It’s the least you can do after causing damage to campus property.”

Nikola lost interest in the water and instead lay back onto the grass, staring at the grey bank of clouds rolling over them. He felt a fleck of rain on his cheek as Helen joined him, stretching onto the lawn.

“Good,” Helen sighed.

 

* * *

 

The night was thick. Instead of raining, the clouds had fallen to the ground in a cold mist that hid everything but the uppermost level of the university.

Helen rested against the window, seeing nothing but a grey blur from the ground floor. The clock behind her ticked loudly and then chimed. Evening class was starting but Helen had no intention of attending. Instead, she waited by the window for James Watson.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Karl Landsteiner is a real, Austrian biologist and physician who identified the three main blood groups in humans. His work allowed for the first blood transfusions in humans and, later in collaboration with others, he discovered the Polio virus leading to the award of the Nobel Prize in 1930.


	3. The Start of Something

**THE START OF SOMETHING**

 

James Watson lingered in the foyer behind, watching her for several minutes. He couldn’t explain it or even reason _why_ but there was something distinctly sinister about Helen’s silhouette against the arching window that made him hesitate.

“Oh,” Helen was startled when she found James leaning on a doorway. “I worried that you wouldn’t come.”

“I am a man of my word,” he said, offering her his arm in a gentlemanly manner.

He led her up the double marble staircase and around to the main student living quarters. Helen had never been allowed here partly because she was a young lady in Victorian England but largely because she still lived at home with an overprotective father.

“There is nothing to concern yourself with,” James assured her. “The dormitories are as dull as any level.”

She rolled her eyes, far from threatened as he pulled up at his room. He knocked first but as he expected, Nigel was downstairs, nodding off in the lecture.

 

* * *

 

John was surprised by the entrance of Nikola Tesla, gracing the lecture with his divine presence halfway through. What surprised him more was the absence of Helen.

“Damages to the structure of the university tower have been deducted from your account,” the lecturer informed Tesla as he took his seat. “And the engineering lab would like their coil of copper wire returned as soon as you’ve untangled its corpse from the roof.”

Nikola ignored the lecturer, instead flipping open a journal. Much to the astonishment of the room, he diligently began copying the contents of the board in a tidy font.

John found his eyes glancing at the door throughout the lecture but Helen never showed. There was another conspicuous gap in the bench belonging to an ever observant, rarely spoken James Watson. John narrowed his eyes, no-one had dared to take up Watson’s seat. It couldn’t be a coincidence.

 

* * *

 

Helen held a handkerchief over her mouth and nose as she stepped into James’s dormitory.

There was a bitter smell on the air that slipped down her throat, sticking halfway where it became pure vile. She gagged, bending over in shock as she simultaneously struggled for breath and tried to avoid it.

“You get used to it,” James assured, closing the door behind them. He slipped a hand around Helen’s waist and lifted her back to her feet, holding her until she regained her composure. “Please, this way.”

The room was a narrow rectangle, more like a tunnel reaching for the small window at its far end than a proper dormitory. Someone had jammed a cloth in the window’s frame, sealing out all light and air – or maybe, Helen reconsidered, sealing the terrible stench inside.

Two beds, one immaculate and the other a mess of blankets and notes, were pushed as far as possible toward the door in such a way that she hit her leg on one as she followed James deeper into the room. A line of oil lamps burnt along the right hand wall, sitting on a narrow shelf. Each one had a bulb of oil beneath them, glowing in the firelight. She could smell their citronella. Helen followed a black trail of smoke with her eyes and saw that the ceiling was stained by a series of black circles to match each lamp.

Four desks hugged the back and side walls in a U shape. A single line of glassware spanned them. Beakers, tubes, flasks, burners, heat mats, distillers, stirring devices and scaffolding were joined in a fragile arrangement. Liquids of different colours bubbled, cooled or trickled in their respective containers.

Rats. Filthy, wild, black street rats scurried about in cages stored beneath the desks. She could hear their claws on the soiled newspapers and their teeth testing the strength of the wire. Beside them was a roughly made wooden box open at the top. Helen approached it cautiously, half kneeling on the dusty ground. It was full of hay which, to her great worry, was moving.

“Our lucky winner for today,” said James, sliding the crate out into the open. Something small and pink was moseying about inside, trying to forage for a stray piece of carrot. “Hold this please.”

James handed Helen a slender knife so sharp that it cut through the air as she took it from him. He pushed her back gently as he reached into the box, his hands disappearing into the dried grass.

“Come on,” he muttered, as the animal slipped out of his grip with a high pitched squeal, thrashing its chubby legs. Once captured, Watson expertly wrestled it onto the nearest table, holding it down with one hand whilst waving Helen over with the other. He clicked his fingers at her without lifting his eyes from the piglet.

Helen realised that he was after the knife. She placed it in his outstretched hand, turning her head sharply when he cut down into the creature’s neck.

 

* * *

 

Paler than usual, Helen moved quietly through the empty corridors of the university. It was almost eleven and far too late to return home. Her father wouldn’t be pleased but he expected it – Helen was often absent on Thursdays after late class. Usually Nikola would drag her back to the attic to bear witness to his latest show. He wasn’t one to enjoy the company of people but he still needed someone to share the world which he discovered with – someone other than the snowy pigeon that haunted his window sill.

Her stomach was still turning but she could not deny the excitement she had felt as the first real science in her life began to unfold. This was it, she was doing something of worth; discovering, investigating and it thrilled her in a terrifying sense.

Helen found a small notebook at the foot of Tesla’s attic but no Tesla. That was odd. She had never known him to be anywhere but here outside of class – or perhaps the roof though he _always_ left the stairs down in case she dropped by. Not that he’d ever admit to it.

“You’re _drenched_!” Helen exclaimed in a whisper, as a decidedly wet Nikola traipsed down the corridor toward her half an hour later, seemingly caught up in his own mind. He didn’t notice her concerned frown until Helen put a hand to his head to check his temperature. He was freezing.

“Did you know that the university has a pool?” he said, louder than was acceptable for the hour.

“No I didn’t,” she eyed him with great concern. “Don’t tell me you went swimming in the middle of the night! Of all the things to do...”

He fished around with a hook for the latch to the attic. Finally he caught the ring and pulled hard, bringing the ladder-like stairs folding from the ceiling in a loud groan. Without a word, he scaled the stairs leaving a trail of water behind him. Helen hitched up her lace skirt and followed him, carrying the book under her arm.

“This yours?” she held the leather bound item aloft as soon as she reached the attic. Nikola was busy lighting oil lamps – most of which were scattered over the floor. The book looked like a possession of Tesla’s – immaculate and generally unused, but the handwriting was conspicuously legible. Out of curiosity, she gave some of the pages a quick read and found that they were lecture notes. Very un-Tesla indeed.

He continued to ignore her, strolling straight over to a tangle of wires she presumed to be his latest experiment, dripping all the way as a stream trickled from his woollen trench coat. Helen shook her head, put the book on the floor along with her bag and came up behind him. Before he had the chance to protest, Helen had slipped the coat off of his shoulders and hung it by the window to dry. He was left in a white collared and cuffed shirt which stuck to his wet skin. Semi transparent, hints of muscle and skin were visible as he crouched down. His silk tie – blood red with gold oriental patterns, was still snuggling around his neck like a splash of blood.

Helen’s own clothes hung around her ankles as her full length embroidered skirt caught a gust of cold wind sneaking in through the now glassless window. Taking a bundle of pins from her bag, she tacked her ringlets out of the way and changed into a spare pair of rubber boots that Nikola left in the corner. It was a necessary precaution when in Nikola’s presence to insulate one’s self from the ground should he take a fancy to a passing electric current. It wasn’t particularly ladylike but then Helen had never been a typical lady.

Nikola began handing her things as soon as she sat down on the floor as if she were an extension of him. He didn’t ask her where she had been for half the night but she felt the need to explain herself.

“I’ve got a little project of my own,” she began, though he didn’t stop to listen. “Of a different kind to yours. More in biological sciences – Watson is –”

“Not worth your time,” he interrupted, “and nowhere near as clever as he lets on.”

“Yes, I am aware that the two of you disapprove of one another. Do you want to hear my story or not?” she reached out and touched his hand, trying to get his attention. A light jolt of electricity jumped through her skin, dissipating down her wrist.

“Sorry...” he muttered, moving his hands away from her. “It does that. When you’re on the floor the boots don’t –” He had a habit of not finishing sentences.

“I’m going to go,” she said quietly, putting the experiment gently on the floor. “You’re busy and you don’t need me disturbing you with senseless chatter. _Laku noć,_ Nikola.”

Nikola felt the layers of her dress ruffle past him, dancing over his skin. The flames of his lanterns dimmed as she ambled across his tiny room. It followed her, light curling around Helen as though it wanted to follow her and leave him in the dark. He stared down at coil of wire in his hands, closed his eyes and then set it aside.

“Stay,” he whispered, just loud enough for her to hear. “Please.”

Helen stopped, halfway through changing her shoes. “You don’t need me,” she said. “And you never wanted me here in the first place. I should have left a long time ago.”

Nikola got to his feet. Still drenched under the glow of the moon and lamps, he looked strangely off guard. He was more alive when he had a brilliant idea, she could see it in his eyes – that glint of something she wanted so desperately to see. A truth on the horizon, revealed in an instant. It was what she searched for, why she wanted to be a scientist and what excited her about Nikola.

“I need you to hold this...” he pointed at an object on the ground but kept his eyes on her. The truth was that Nikola didn’t _require_ anyone to help him but he _needed_ her. Ever since she had found him at the beginning of the year, staring out from his attic window, he had needed her. “Your experiment, tell me about it,” he offered.

Helen eyed him for quite some time before finally rolling her eyes, deciding to stay.

“Later,” she said, returning to his side. They sat down together, their eyes occasionally flicking to each other but never at the same time.

“Don’t leave me,” he said softly, not daring to look at her in case she disapproved.

Helen didn’t leave. She stayed there all night by his side as he created a motor with a new kind of electricity, one more powerful than any the world had seen. By the time he was finished, Helen was asleep on the floor beside him, resting her head in her hands which still clutched onto the useless piece of wire he had given her to hold. He smiled – something he would not let her see him do.

Finished, he picked her up gently and carried her to the small bed in the corner of the attic, laying her on it. He found a warm blanket and placed it over her, then blew out all the lamps and reclined against the floorboards for the few hours remaining before day broke.

 

* * *

 

Helen returned home before breakfast, depositing various items in the foyer before staggering upstairs to change. Her father, Dr. Gregory Magnus, was waiting for her at the breakfast table, reading through a newspaper. He didn’t say anything but Helen could feel his disapproval glaring at her through the print.

“I have to leave in an hour,” he announced, as Helen sipped a cold cup of tea. “Will you be back this evening?”

“Will you?” Like father like daughter. Gregory was often missing, out on expeditions or simply gone without explanation.

Gregory sighed, folding his paper. “You’re too much like me,” he muttered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Laku noć - Goodnight.


	4. Breaking In

 

**BREAKING IN**

 

The latch on the front door of the Gregorian era Magnus apartment dropped, crashing into the lock. Shortly after, her father’s shadow tracked across the leadlight windows in the morning glow. A horse drawn cart rattled over the cobblestones, skidding on the dew. An old man with a curved spine hushed the gas streetlights while a trio of feral dogs sniffed the curb, hunting a long vanished mouse.

Helen finished her tea, calmly draining the china cup. Her heart was beating fast as a shiver worked its way across her skin. _Finally_ , she thought. Helen was alone with the house.

Hesitation.

Helen’s hand hovered over the brass handle leading to her father’s study. Her father kept his things under guard of key to keep prying eyes like hers at bay. He had inherit distrust of the world garnered from decades of experience. The handle stuck firm against her hand. _Locked._

Undeterred, she slipped her fingers into her hair, pulling out one of the pins nesting amongst her curls. With practised hands she fed it into the lock, turning it slowly until one of its bent ends hooked over the locking mechanism.

She leant against the door, pushing it open despite the angry squeal unleashed. It was like trespassing on sacred ground – crossing her father’s office. Helen did it quickly, heading straight for his desk. She skirted around the side of it to the front section, nudging his leather chair out of the way. There were three beautifully carved drawers along its front. Helen picked the one in the centre, jiggling it open. The old wood was damp and stuck to the tracks but she wrestled with it until it jarred forward and her eyes fell over its contents.

A dozen or so letters were scattered on top. Digging through them, Helen’s finger hunted for the silver key hidden at the back of the drawer. She held it up to the light and smiled. It was attached to a gold-thread tassel which would hold its own against any respectable treasure.

 

* * *

 

Watson reclined against the cool brick wall behind his bed. He was seated on top of the covers, fully clothed with his feet hanging over the edge and a silk scarf around his nose to dull the stench. He liked to consider himself an early riser, never wasting a moment of the day but Nigel Griffin put him to shame, up well before the sun even considered peaking over the cloud banks.

With half an hour before breakfast, James kept himself busy reading through the folders Helen had been so kind as to point out to him in the ‘new’ library. He _borrowed_ them, in the more loose sense of the word. Nikola would call it ‘acquiring’ and Helen might go so far as ‘stealing’ but Watson considered it a necessity for the greater good of knowledge. Besides, he would return them well before anyone noticed their absence.

Helen had been right. The information on the subject of their study was a mess of internal contradictions held back by the technology of the time. Several writers expressed frustration at their equipment while others had spent a good portion of their research time building more sensitive equipment rather than running tests. Work was going slowly. Helen was interested in knowledge at the very edge of the horizon, perhaps even beyond it.

“Awake already?” Nigel Griffin had opened the door tacitly, slipping into the room unnoticed. He headed for his makeshift wardrobe, ducking into it, searching for his overcoat.

“Of course,” James replied, choosing the last folder.

Nigel slung the coat over his shoulders, retrieved a satchel – checking specially for his diary and then returned to the door frame.

“We need to open that window,” he said, resisting the urge to hurl. After the fresh air of sports field, his dormitory was almost unbearable except for – he sniffed again, more carefully this time. There was a new scent wading through the usual putrid haze. It was a faint perfume – oddly familiar. “Someone’s been in here...” he said accusingly, wrapping his fingers around the door. “That blonde woman – you haven’t...”

James lifted his eyes from the file. Their meaning was clear but he backed them up with a stern, “Of course not.”

His dormitory companion raised a scruffy eyebrow. “Right...” he decided to leave the subject alone. “Well, four of us are going into town after breakfast to replace our quills. We’ll divert to the river if we can. I’d invite you along to join us but your default answer in cases such as these seems to be an irritated, ‘no’.”

James’s silence confirmed Nigel’s assumption.

The silence was _too_ silent.

Their room was usually a quiet raucous of animals, buried in crates and cages along the far wall yet all Nigel could hear were the rats chewing at their bars.

“What happened to the George?” he asked, worried.

“Can you obtain a new pig whilst you are in town?”

Nigel had his answer, and he was not happy about it. George was a pet, though apparently not to James who seemed to lack affection for anything alive. “I’m no errand boy,” he glared, forever sensitive of his less than privileged upbringing. _New money_ was sneered at, more so than poverty.

 _Perhaps they should have asked first_ , thought Watson but he had not been aware of Nigel’s attachment to the creature. “But you can?”

“Of course I can,” muttered Nigel, slamming the door shut.

 

* * *

 

Helen climbed the stairs to the attic, ducking under an ill-placed beam. She struck a match and the dark landing flickered into light. With her spare hand, Helen slipped the key into the lock and entered the tiny room cramped under the roof. Before progressing, she lit one of the hanging oil lamps.

The attic was not your typical laboratory. It had a makeshift feel about it, accentuated by the overturned trunks posing as desks and the tightly packed crates lining the wall in a bookshelf of sorts.

She breathed deeply, inhaling the smell of knowledge. It was a heady mix of parchment, ink and burning oil. Helen thought that it was beautiful, in a forbidden manner. Her father never brought her up here. When she was eleven years old she assembled the courage to ask about the room at the top of the stairs. He told her that it was empty. Helen Magnus learned two important lessons that day. One; Gregory Magnus was an accomplished liar and two; there was something of great value hidden away in the attic.

It was another three years before she found herself standing in exactly the same place, staring out at the room with a flame working its way down her match.

“ _Ouch...”_ she dropped the match. It burnt itself out before hitting the floor.

Helen stepped over it, striding to the largest of the trunk-desks. In the low light, she skimmed over its chaos of objects. Her father had never been neat but this place was an exceptional mess, even by his standards.

It was odd then, she thought, when she saw a cleared segment of desk with an envelope laid out with its writing facing the attic door – opposite to the rest of the items. She bent down toward it, struggling to read its address in the waning light.

‘ _Helen’_ , it read.

She jerked backwards, glancing nervously at the door behind to make sure that she was alone. Helen checked the writing on the envelope again. It was definitely addressed to her. She looked more carefully at the way it was presented on the desk and it became clear, it was left there for her to _find_.

Predicting that she was already going to be in trouble, Helen lifted the letter up, turned it over and then slid her nail under the wax sealing it. It snapped off and the letter unfolded.

_To my dearest Helen,_

_Time was short for us. I imagine that I have become one of your father’s stories by now, woven about in that restless imagination of his. You enjoy his stories, I’m sure, as it gives him pleasure to tell them well. It was my hope that one day he would tell you our story – maybe that day has passed. It is difficult, addressing a time that will not come for so long and for me, never at all._

_It was my instruction that he keep one story in particular from you for as long as possible. If he has given you this letter, then you have already begun to notice the subtle changes within yourself – they said that in time you would._

_Helen, you have a gift. Do not let anybody tell you otherwise. It is precious, unique and it is yours alone._

_When you were fourteen months old you crawled onto a window sill and fell, three floors to the street. Against all expectations, you lived – unharmed save a scar behind your left ear. Indeed your injuries were mild and what little of them you had, you recovered from in days rather than months. The doctors did not know what to think and so abandoned your case, putting it down to an act of God but your father and I watched you very carefully from then on._

_You never got ill, Helen._

_Your father studies, or I should say, has an interest in the extremities of humanity. He has seen variations on our form which test the very definition of what it is to be human. Some of his creatures are beautiful, others frightening._

_He learned that a small percentage of us have an abnormality. In all of his creative genius, he called these people, ‘Abnormals’ and began to devote a great deal of time and money studying them. Soon he discovered that he was not the first to cross this path and together we uncovered a history of human diversity through antiquity documents up until the present day._

_It became clear, like a flash of light across an evening sky, that you too, are one of them._

_Time for you, will be an endless walk. It is your gift to move through its ages, free of the fear mortality brings._

_Forgive me, for not being there with you._

_Your mother._

* * *

 

Helen stood in front of the small oval mirror. She lifted her hair away from her ear and turned her head to the side. A thin red line curved across her skin. Her fingers hovered over it. Was it even _possible_? To live forever – Helen refused to believe a word of it.


	5. Taking a Turn

 

**TAKING A TURN**

 

She stacked her notebooks calmly, tying them together before slipping them inside her father’s leather satchel. _Nothing had changed. It was only a letter. A letter from the past which meant nothing._ Helen Magnus repeated her thoughts, wanting more than anything to believe them.

The tears on her cheeks had gone cold. She wiped them off, unsure of how they had gotten there without her approval.

It was mid-morning and the city was thick with bodies trying to reach their respective destinations. The university was within walking distance, visible where it rose above the other buildings. She could see its two sandstone spires, stretching up toward the sky with their tops stained, almost like the smoky peaks of mountains.

The sight of its steadfast walls drew her in. She had never felt an attachment to Oxford, having fought to enter it and harder to stay but all of a sudden there was no place that she’d rather be than inside its hostile walls.

Helen joined the crowd of students trailing in through the gates. Aside from the wives of professors taking a turn around the gardens, she was the only lady making her way toward the building. The men noticed this, turning their heads ever so slightly as she walked by them. Most averted their eyes, returning to their conversations, maybe even throwing in an aside about the outrage of allowing a woman to study. It was a select few that greeted her with a smile, tipping their hats.

The truth was, the university had never officially allowed her to study within its walls. She was neither enrolled, nor on any attendance lists. She was just a woman that happened to sit inside the lecture rooms, furiously taking notes and handing in assignments for the interest of the professors who read them, not out of duty but curiosity.

“Helen,” a friendly voice approached. It belonged to Mr. Druitt, the mysterious student she had met several weeks ago, lurking in the hallway outside night class.

“Still lost?” she raised her eyebrow challengingly. They were both supposed to be in class already.

“Would your opinion of me lower if I confessed to it?” he smiled, a few strands of soft hair falling over his eyes. It made her return the smile with a slight flutter in her stomach.

“It would make me suspect of your directional skills,” she confessed, climbing the steps in front of the main doors to meet him. John was hiding in the shade of the overhang, watching the crowds scurry by. It was a favourite past time of his.

“Truth hurts,” he offered her his arm, which she took, wrapping her fingers gently around the stiff fabric of his coat.

Helen rolled her eyes, letting John escort her around the passageway which hugged the edge of the building protected by an outcrop of ornately carved wood. “This is _not_ the way to class,” she noted, to his amusement.

“No it is not,” he admitted. “But I could not resist taking the long way.”

They did not say anything else, content to walk quietly in each others’ company.

 

* * *

 

Nikola kept a vigil by his attic window, brushing the remainders of the glass from its frame. He didn’t care that the shards tumbled over the roof tiles and onto the passersby below. She had not come to class and Nikola could not understand why it bothered him so much.

He had been alone all of his life, ever since the horse had reared up and pounded his brother from this life. Every time he closed his eyes he heard those hooves and saw his frightened sibling scream, reaching towards him. That had been his life until Helen had appeared, slipping into the back row of night class.

Now, when he closed his eyes, sometimes he saw her smile.

Nikola’s bony elbows dug into the corners of the window, propping his head up as he stared out at the city beyond the university’s gates. A few pigeons played on the breeze, soaring high above, hunting scraps. He watched them wistfully.

One broke from the flock to cruise by his window, buffeting his face with the flap of its wings.

“Not now,” he whispered to it, waving the attentions of the beautiful creature away.

 

* * *

 

They sat on the seat beneath one of the ancient plane trees. Its limbs spread out over the lawn, decorating it with shadows that shimmered in the breeze, rearranging themselves in an endless tessellation.

Helen’s arm was still locked beneath John’s, kept safe. He wanted to say, _‘You’re very beautiful...’_ but didn’t dare. This woman’s reputation preceded her by two city blocks with screams of genuine terror so he settled for, “It’s a beautiful day.”

She agreed, stretching her free arm along the edge of the bench. Neither of them cared about the class going on inside the building. It was a sacrifice worth enduring and it was completely unintentional.

“Oh my,” Helen half-jumped at the chiming of the clock tower as it rang out over the university garden. “I should have been in the library hours ago.” Poor Watson, he would be waiting for her. “I really must go,” she said, freeing herself from John.

He stood with her, still smiling at the way she fussed.

“Would you like company on your long journey?”

“No, I don’t think so,” she replied quickly. “I find the walk reasonably short under normal circumstances. There has been enough diversion for one day.”

“Harsh,” John stepped back, allowing her passage.

She gave him a little wink, “The truth always is.”

 

* * *

 

James Watson had forgotten all about Helen Magnus.

His nose inched further and further toward the bindings of his latest find – the published journal of Claude Bernard. It was in French, which suited James. Languages were like songs to him. He learned their rhythm until their lyrics unfolded and he could hum along in tune.

‘ _Medicine, like any other form of science, can be reduced to its mathematical base. Quantifiable principles, natural laws, predictable results – all of these should be applicable to the natural sciences as readily as to the mechanical world. It is only that the laws of natural things outweigh their counterparts in complexity that we are yet to discover their detail.’_

Watson trailed his finger over the lines of text. He agreed. The world around him was full of detail, some of it too small for him to make out. There had to be laws to govern it otherwise the world he knew would fall to chaos.

‘ _It is possible to observe the crossings of these two worlds. Inside the human body are systems not unlike machinery. Their processes are quantifiable – especially those of the heart and blood. Like a machine, the heart pumps the life source around the body in accordance with a set of laws detailed in the following. Vivisections reveal these internal movements of the body. Pealing back the layers of a living organism such as a frog allows us to study these mechanical phenomena in great detail.’_

Watson would copy these experiments, cruel as they were. He had to know about the world – every detail he could pry from its claws. His hunger for it would not rest. The secrets of life, more than anything, satisfied his ravenous curiosity and allowed him nights of peaceful sleep in a world he would one day be able to explain.

“Splendid, you are still here.”

Helen dragged a heavy chair halfway across the floor in a loud screech. The librarian glared viciously at the blonde but Helen Magnus wasn’t paying the slightest bit of attention. She settled her seat beside the window that James had chosen to occupy and collapsed into it, digging through her bag for a notepad.

The dreadful noise of old wood grinding against polished floors shattered the world he had retreated into. James looked up.

“I apologise for the –” she checked the clock hung above the desk where the librarian was stamping a pile of books with more force than was necessary. “It really is getting quite late,” she realised.

“It depends upon the length of your day,” replied James, returning his nose to the pages.

Helen was not used to being ignored, which was exactly what James did every time his head sagged toward the pages of a book. He had more interest in the writings of dead men than her bright eyes and curious mind. This realisation did not distress her, if anything, it intrigued her. Being taken for granted was refreshing.

Without a word, Helen produced a small, loosely bound book and balanced it atop her notepads. She made certain that its title was concealed as she began to read, giving her best impression of intrigue.

It took half an hour before James could bare the secret no more.

“I must know what you’re reading,” he said, attempting to lift the cover. Helen slid her hand over it, pinning it down.

“Nothing that would interest you,” she replied, flicking the page over.

“You are a tease, Miss Magnus,” James closed his own document, holding its cover up for her inspection. “I see that we will have to learn to share if we are to get on.”

She did the same with hers, and the pair exchanged documents.

“How very generous of you, Mr Watson,” she opened the new book dramatically. Her victorious smile shrivelled when she realised that the book was in French. Too embarrassed to confess, she suffered, skimming for equations and trying to make sense out of the few words she could understand. Helen vowed to add this language to her classes.

“Are you unwell?” James touched her hand gently, catching Helen’s attention. She looked pale, though her cheeks had flushed bright pink. The combination made her eyes more blue than any he had seen.

The world blurred a little and Helen realised that she was not well at all. Her head was light, tasting the edges of sleep while her limbs dragged, feeling heavy.

“I don’t,” she stammered, raising a hand to her head as her books slid down her dress to the floor. “I don’t know...”

James lunged forward in time to catch the young woman as she tilted, falling from her chair.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Claude Bernard was a French physiologist working throughout the 1800's. He was one of the first scientists to insist upon the concept of 'blind testing' and a pioneer in the field of vivisection famously quoted:
> 
> "The physiologist is no ordinary man. He is a learned man, a man possessed and absorbed by a scientific idea. He does not hear the animals' cries of pain. He is blind to the blood that flows. He sees nothing but his idea, and organisms which conceal from him the secrets he is resolved to discover."
> 
> He was a vehement pursuer of truth often at the expense of other creatures' suffering.


	6. The World's an Experiment

The students at the table opposite looked up, quills hovering over their pages, dripping ink as they watched the woman collapse into the waiting arms of a young man.

Blonde ringlets scattered over James’ shoulder as her head settled on his coat. He was on one knee, easing Helen out of the chair and fully into his arms so that he could lift her. Although Helen was a slender thing, her dress and adornments with their yards of fabric tested James’s strength as he carried her through the library, curled over his shoulder.

Helen wandered in and out of consciousness, sometimes opening her eyes a crack to see the hallway flood past in a haze.

He did not delay, turning and making short work of the staircase leading to the top floor of the university. She mumbled something that he couldn’t make out as he reached the end of the stairwell, reshuffling her in his arms as she began to slip.

James arrived in the narrow corridor, barely wide enough for him to carry Helen through. There was an arched window at the far end, dusty and scratched from centuries of neglect. Above was a square opening in the ceiling, blocked by a folded set of stairs. With Helen still in his arms, James wrestled with a hooked rod, stretching it up to the ceiling where its sharp end caught the hoop of metal. He yanked it down and the stairs unfolded, revealing the entrance to Tesla’s attic.

“ _Ono što je pakao ... ?”_

Watson heard a voice above startle.

“Mr Tesla, your assistance please!” James called out, moving Helen to his shoulder so that he could climb the ladder, albeit awkwardly.

Tesla tripped and fell at the sound of his stairs unfurling. Someone heavy was climbing them, about to peak in through the hole in the floor. Nikola picked himself up and raced over, sticking his head through the attic where he found the unpleasant Watson heaving an unconscious Helen toward him.

“We cannot both come through. Can you reach her waist?”

Nikola was caught off guard by the intrusion, muttering and spluttering that he could. He reached down and took hold of Helen. Seated at the hole’s edge, together Nikola and James managed to navigate her into the attic. She ended up in Nikola’s lap, laid across him.

“Move your legs, Mr Tesla,” James shoved the dangling legs to the side as he tackled the last few steps of the ladder. He was out of breath but far from broken. “Come on, we need to lay her down properly.”

Nikola stared at Helen’s limp body, struck dumb. He didn’t notice the gentle rise and fall of her chest, or the pink flushing beneath her cheeks – all he saw was her still form, dead in his arms.

“It’s Helen...” he whispered, not able to tear his eyes away.

“Well spotted. Now bring her over to the bed. Today, please!” James added sharply, when the young man refused to move.

Staggering to his feet, Nikola made his way to the bed, laying her onto the carefully folded sheets. James knelt down beside Helen, taking hold of her wrist. Nikola sat on the floor next to James, leaning in toward Helen with a frightened look. He had never seen anyone faint before. Its similarity to death alarmed him.

“She will be fine,” said James, moving to her forehead. She was hot but not worryingly so. “Do not fuss,” he waved Nikola’s hands away from the sheets he was trying to clear. “She needs air, not panic.”

“What happened?”

“I have no idea,” admitted James. “We were in the library talking and she collapsed. It is not an uncommon condition amongst women. There is probably nothing wrong except it being a particularly warm day.”

Nikola shook his head. “Helen is not like that,” he insisted.

“Well,” said James, “she is today. Bring me some water.”

That disgruntled Nikola. He was not used to being treated like a common servant but for Helen’s sake, he obliged the brusque man. James took the glass from him and roused Helen with a splash of water. She sat up with a start, gasping for air.

“Steady on,” James tried to calm her as she clung onto his arm with such force he thought it might break.

“Urg...” she coughed, rasping for air as if it wouldn’t go in. James supported her back with his free arm, pushing her ever so slightly forwards.

“Tesla,” he hissed in the young man’s direction. “Take her other hand.”

Nikola’s eyes wandered to Helen’s flailing hand. He reached out and she caught it.

 

* * *

 

Helen sipped the glass of water, wrapped in an unused blanket Nikola excavated from his cupboard. It smelled of copper and wine, which calmed her shaking. James was over by Nikola’s experiment, kneeling down for a closer look at the unfinished motor. Ordinarily, Nikola would have shrieked and chased him off, afraid of intellectual theft but on this occasion all he did was give a disapproving glance in the other man’s direction.

“Where were you?” Nikola asked Helen, taking the glass from her as she finished. She didn’t seem to understand the question so he asked it again.

“Oh,” she had forgotten about John and their time spent in the garden. “I decided not to come. I was running late as it was and I didn’t want to disturb the others.” It was a bold lie and Nikola wasn’t fooled. He had lost count of the amount of times Helen had pulled him through the doors of late class with no regard toward the other students.

“This motor will never work,” observed James absently, leering in front of the small object constructed of metal and wood. It looked nothing at all like his own project which, incidentally, had a habit of catching on fire.

“Yes it does,” Nikola snapped over his shoulder. “It’s finished – has been for some time now.”

“Impossible.”

“A certainty, I assure you.”

“Show me.”

“Never.” Nikola was on his feet, about to pace over to Watson and remove him from the presence of his precious motor. “ _That_ is the future,” he declared. “Careful you don’t tread on it.”

“It is a school project,” James corrected. “And just like the rest of us, the lecturer will grade it and send you on your way.”

“Leave it, Nikola...” Helen had reached up and caught hold of Nikola’s coat. “He is just playing with you. James – enough. Nikola is not one for your games.”

Though neither Helen nor Nikola caught it, James had smiled, satisfied. He had proved something about Tesla that he had always suspected. The world was an experiment to James. He showed no distinction between places and people, if there was something worth learning, James would find a way to learn it regardless of the social consequences.

“And what about your little project?” Tesla tilted his head in a bird like manner. He asked Helen, not James.

He was interested now, thought Helen. Jealousy did that to Nikola.

“It’s not your cup of tea, Nikola,” she replied cooly, letting go of him. “ _Wishy-washy voodoo_ , I believed you called the science once.”

“Well, now I am interested,” he was still speaking to Helen but glaring at James, following the man’s every movement as he paced around his floor-boarded lab. Nikola just _knew_ that he was going to step on something important. Some people had no respect for other people’s property or the delicacies of –

“I can _hear you_ thinking, Nikola.” Helen scorned. Sometimes Nikola’s eyes betrayed his thoughts more loudly than his lips. “You know, if the two of you could get over _whatever it was_ that set you against each other in the beginning, you’d be the best of friends.”

“An event that will _never_ come to pass,” Nikola assured her. James agreed, accidentally crushing a small coil of wire with his boot.

“All right,” Helen spilled out to avert disaster, as James kicked the object aside, “we are investigating blood compatibility amongst species.”

Nikola spun around, running a wandering finger through his moustache. “Why?” That sounded like a perfectly horrid thing to do.

“Why _anything?_ ” she retorted, getting a little snappy herself. He was always like this with anything she did, as if she didn’t have as much right as him to possess curiosity. “The topic was raised in one our assignments and –”

“We did an assignment on blood?”

“No Nikola, you didn’t but the rest of us did. As I was saying, my father helped me a great deal with the research – it is a passion of his.”

“Blood is a passion of your father’s... now I really am worried.”

Helen shook her head in frustration. “You can be cruel, when you want to.”

 

* * *

 

“Remind me what he’s doing here...” James stood in front of his dormitory door, unwilling to open it with Nikola so close by. It was night, ten minutes before their lecture but instead of assembling in the corridor they had decided to carry on with last night’s experiment. Helen’s idea, though she had hidden it well, prompting James into the suggesting through a series of calculated questions. He had forgotten though, how he came to agree of Tesla's presence.

“He's here to inspect your equipment, see if he can fix the electrical system so that we can carry on with the experiment. Remember? It didn’t work last time and the candlelight made things very difficult.”

Nikola grinned menacingly from behind Helen’s shoulder. No doubt the medic had it all wired backwards. Nikola wasn’t thrilled about spending more time in Waston’s company but he was curious to take a look at what these little Frankensteins had been up to.

“Well, you are responsible for _it_ at all times,” James eyed Helen sternly, unlocking the door.

 

* * *

 

The lecturer was somewhat dismayed. He was well used to empty seats. It didn’t bother him that students dragged their bored bodies into his lecture at all hours, hobbling and grumbling as they took their seats. He accepted the empty front row as a compromise between knowledge and social standing. Their lack of interest in the natural world would evolve and one day they would all become decent scientists or at the very least curious.

He sighed, shaking his head as he turned to face what remained of his room. There were four seats in particular that he didn’t like to see abandoned. It's not that he thought they'd fall behind, no – he worried what they were up to, unsupervised. They may not know it yet but the lecturer could see that the absent four possessed that streak of curiosity at the heart of brilliance – a dangerous thing to leave alone.

John Druitt had been racing to keep pace with the writing on the board when the professor threw a piece of chalk at him.

“Check your hearing,” the lecturer said, before adding in his soft, wafting voice, “Would you mind finding the others?”

John frowned, “Find _who_?”

The lecturer flicked his eyes to the empty seats. “Off with you,” he spun back to the board, picking a new piece of chalk.

John blinked dumbly, waiting in vain for further instruction. He closed his text book and packed away his things. _Find all of them?_

* * *

 

“You are late.” Nigel folded his newspaper, throwing it off to the side as the door to the dormitory opened. His eyes widened when a young woman followed James in, who in turn was trailed by the horrible man from the pond.

“Urgh...” Nikola held his nose, “It smells ghastly in here.”

“It passes,” said Helen, stepping between the beds as she followed James toward the laboratory end of the room.

Nigel waited for them to settle in front of the desk at the far end.

“I’m not gonna name this one,” said Nigel, pointing at the box of hay.

“Probably wise,” replied James.

Nikola eyed the box, catching sight of a hint of pale pink flesh. “Why aren’t we naming the pig?” he asked innocently, but found no answer amongst the scientists.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Ono što je pakao ... ?” - What the hell...?"


	7. Vivisection

“Ouch!” Nikola shook off a large spark that snapped over his skin. It left a nasty scorch mark which he attempted to rub off on his jacket to no avail. “There,” he declared finally, as the tangle of equipment spluttered into life. The room was brighter now, baking under the glow of the arclight. “All it takes is a little bit of love.”

“He’s not bad, Helen,” James muttered, nudging the young sparky out of the way. “I’ll give you that.”

The four of them closed in on the experiment table which sprawled along the end of the room. It was creaking under the weight of the new equipment Nigel had been busy setting up for their experiment. Despite his manners and clumsily large hands closer in nature to paws, Nigel was a perfectionist when it came to science. His rough approach yielded reliable results, much to the frustration of James.

“Shall we?” James beckoned Helen closer. She came to his side, followed instinctively by Nikola who squeezed himself in next to her.

Soon, all four of them had arranged themselves into a crowded line either side of James, staring intently as Nigel produced a basket. He reached inside and withdrew a startled creature. Nigel passed over the squirming frog, holding it steady as James wrapped his fingers tightly around it like a clamp. Nikola smiled at the frog, peering back into its dark slit pupils. It was a beautiful creature with two oversized yellow orbs for eyes and extremely long legs which it was using to bat at James’s hand leaving trails of sticky liquid on him.

James flinched, appalled by the creature.

“The book, Helen...”

Helen knelt to a large pile of books on the side wall, scanning down their spines until she dug her fingers between them and extracted her desired victim. She laid the book open on the table next to James, tilting one of the lamps to light its pages.

Nigel unrolled a leather satchel revealing a sinister arrangement of implements tucked inside a dozen pockets. Nikola’s breath caught as he scanned the faces of James and Nigel.

“What _kind_ of experiment are we doing, exactly...” he asked. Helen was packed in tight beside him, staring on eagerly as Nigel loosened the buckles holding the metal objects in place. The look that laced her eyes frightened Nikola. He had never seen that grin upon her lips before.

James tipped the frog onto its back as Nigel selected four long, tapered needles – holding their slender shafts up to the light.

“Good quality,” commented James, as he unfolded one of the frog’s legs, holding its squirming appendage to the table. “Expensive.”

“Only the best,” Nigel replied, threading the sharp metal through the frog’s skin, nailing it to the wood beneath. The creature croaked in protest. Panic rippled through its body as Nigel selected another needle.

Helen gasped quietly, finding Nikola’s hand. He barely noticed the brush of fingers over his skin as he stood transfixed, watching as each of the frog’s legs were secured. Next, James selected a medical scalpel and cut a shallow slit down the centre of its chest. Nigel pulled the skin open, pinning it out of the way to reveal its inner workings of delicate veins, surges of muscle and transparent skin.

“Oh my _god_!” Nikola’s throat clenched over. His stomach lurched as the little creature’s heart beat steady, pumping the lifeforce through its splayed body. It was still alive.

“Now,” said James indifferently, “we inject the sample.”

Nikola’s body convulsed. He broke away from Helen, stumbling halfway through the room before hurling his frugal lunch over the floor.

Nigel’s nose tweaked. “Nice,” he muttered over his shoulder. “Do us a favour Helen, don’t bring your friends along for the show next time.”

“He’s not like us,” she snapped, before venturing toward Nikola who was coughing and shuddering. “Calm down,” she whispered, placing a hand on his back.

“This is _wrong_ ,” he rasped, pushing her off. “What are you doing here Helen? God...” Nikola fell to his knees, cradling his head. Helen caught him. Her arms slid to his waist and she held Nikola tightly from behind.

“Get him out of here,” hissed James, trying to ignore the distraction. According to the book, they didn’t have long to complete this experiment before the frog gave up the last of its life.

No one had noticed the door to the dormitory creak open. John, with his hand still clutched around the wooden frame, was taken aback by the scene. The stench of the room was unbelievable, toxic and nauseating as he breathed it in. Helen was over by the wall, clutching a very ill Tesla. His pale face was the first to spot John. Nigel and James stood with their backs to the door, leaning over some kind of table immersed in the bright glow of an electric light.

“ _What..._ ” John opened his mouth, but no more words came out.

Nigel’s eyes rolled dramatically as he swivelled, turning to face the confused figure lingering in their doorway. “Another friend of yours?” he accused Helen, clearly displeased by the constant interruptions.

John stepped forward, dodging the beds cluttered in the walkway. There was something struggling on the table. Something small –

“That is a living creature,” he said in horror, when he saw the tortured body of the frog breathe. Half a dozen elegant needles held it in place, quivering. A set of organs were nestled in its open body on display for the room. “This is the work of demons,” he growled at them, before striding over to Helen. “Come on,” he grabbed her sharply, pulling her away from Nikola. “We’re leaving.”

“John!” she struggled, trying to free herself as she was dragged unceremoniously through the room.

“Take him too, if it’s not too much trouble,” James pointed at Nikola, who had managed to stumble to his feet.

“Let – me – _go!_ ” Helen wriggled free, flicking her hair back over her shoulder. “What are you doing here, John?”

“What am _I_ doing? Our lecturer sent me to find you. I’ve searched half the university and where do I find the elusive Miss Magnus? In the _men’s dormitory_ with these three!” He pointed at them, angrily.

“That’s not fair,” she replied. “What we're doing is more important than his dreary lectures.”

John shook his head. “This is not what science is about. That poor creature – what good will it do you other than a passing curiosity? What does its suffering buy you, Helen? A moment of awe?”

“I can show you, John,” she said calmly, offering him her hand. “If you’ll let me.”

 

* * *

 

The carriage rattled to a halt. Its two passengers alighted, stepping into a torrent of rain which buried the footpath beneath a sheet of rancid water. There was no thunder or lightning in tow, just clouds choked with moisture, alleviating themselves on the city of Oxford.

Helen hid under a hooded jacket, dodging a stray dog as she opened the ornate door to the townhouse and disappeared inside followed closely by John. Dripping, she turned up the gas lights. The hallway flickered into view. John undid his soggy coat and hung it on the hall-stand.

“Come on.” She beckoned him down the corridor toward a set of stairs leading up into a cramped loft which hardly fit in the house's tiny structure.

“My father is more than a doctor,” she confessed, taking the steps carefully. Helen held a lamp aloft in one hand and gripped the fragile railing with her other. She ducked under a stray beam of wood at the landing. John only ducked lower, already slouching his tall figure. “His passion for the workings of the human body led him to startling discoveries.”

He watched her slide a silver and gold key into the lock. Its beauty put the old door to shame. Helen turned the key until it clicked. “He likes keys,” she added, “something about the unlocking of secrets.”

“And treasure,” added John, as the door creaked open revealing a dark expanse.

After lighting the hanging lamps, Helen rifled through one of the upturned desks until she found a leather diary. It was part of a set, placed beside a pile of bound research notes and sample jars.

“My father’s life work,” she said, running her thumb lovingly over the book’s spine. “Treatments and cures to all manner of afflictions. The deeper he dug into the intricacies of humanity, the more disturbed he became. Mr Druitt, we are not divine beings. Humanity is greater than that, more _diverse_.”

“This is not good for you,” John approached, but she stepped away, opening the journal to reveal a detailed sketch of a frightening form. It was a creature, hunched with hardened skin, cracked like scales with spines of bone along its back.

“What he found shocked him,” she continued, defiant. “A world full of monsters.”

“There are more things in this life than we should know,” he replied. John’s voice was low and steady, as if trying to coax a wild animal out of its den. Helen was not one to be lured. “Just leave this,” he said softly, “and come with me.”

“You fail to understand,” Helen replied firmly. “They were _not_ monsters – what my father found. They were people born with anomalous conditions. There is so much to learn. How can I ignore it?”

They made their way back downstairs and seated themselves in Helen’s modest lounge room. The room was dim, lit by the hallway behind. The rain outside fell harder, pounding into the glass windows with such force that Helen could feel each drop pounding through the air. John edged forward beside her.

“Listen to me,” he eyed her sternly, cupping her tiny hands in his. “There is something higher than science –” she was about to groan, “and that is _morality._ Before every step ask yourself not, ‘is this progress’ but ‘is this _right_ ’. That is the mark of a true scientist, something your friends have yet to grasp. You have _talent_. Do not waste it on these digressions.”

“Hardly a digression,” she protested. “This is the work of lifetimes.”

“But not yours,” John’s hand moved to her cheek, tenderly stroking it. Amidst her vehement defence, a tear had slid down her cheek and was going cold when he brushed it away. “Find a better way to study them, these anomalous conditions. You are brilliant,” he grinned, and she finally smiled. “So prove it.”

Eventually she nodded.

“Will you help me?”

They stood up together. He let go of her and allowed himself to be returned to the front door.

“Nothing would please me more if you can endure my clumsy assistance,” he admitted, collecting his coat and stepping back out into the storm. He descended the first of the three steps from the door, levelling his height off so that he could stare directly at her. He lingered, a breath shy of her lips. Helen blushed and retreated into the house, ducking behind the door.

 

* * *

 

It was no easy thing to sell benevolence to the others...

“Absolute absurdity – the woman’s gone mad – women in general,” James had said, snapping his book shut before finally relinquishing it.

“We’re returning this one to the library,” Helen replied sternly, snatching it from his keep.

Eventually they came around. Helen’s talents extended beyond science into the realm of persuasion. As for Nikola, he seemed content as long as they weren’t torturing frogs. They set a regular date to meet and explore the world of science beyond their lectures. Every Thursday evening. The unnamed pig became a pet, saved from an unpleasant fate. Months on, Nigel still refused to name it.

Helen set about organising the dormitory into a proper laboratory. She pilfered whatever she could from the old man in charge of the university’s supplies, stockpiling it along the walls of the dorm. The library suffered heavy losses with all of its lost books ending up safely piled in Nikola’s attic except for one casualty, sacrificed in the name of science or as Nikola often insisted, _‘a completely accidental accident’_.

Their collective name also came about via accident. As they made their daily strut from the lunch rooms to the garden, one student set to calling out, ‘them five!’ as they passed. They travelled in a pack now and the name stuck. James tweaked it a bit of course, improving on its grammar.

‘The Five’ made them feel like they were part of something. They weren’t _really_ but that didn’t matter.

Nikola’s opinion of Nigel improved, if only because he found the strange man particularly skilled at acquiring equipment. Honestly, Nikola had never had so much wire to play with which resulted in weekly direct hits to the building by cruising lightning storms. Helen had less luck with Nigel, choosing to keep out of his way. He made no secret of his dislike of her; often neglecting to greet her is she arrived in a group of flat insulting her intelligence at every opportunity. James and John – now there was a curious bond. They were never particularly fond of one another but their intellects delighted in the challenge. Deconstructing the other was an entertainment that they could sustain happily for hours and whenever they got bored with that, they returned to their other favourite past time, a shared dislike of Nikola.

 

* * *

 

It was another late night. Helen was tucked into a chair, half asleep as she read through a library journal. A loud ‘crash’ startled her as the front door flew open and her father hurried in, slamming and locking it behind him. Gregory Magnus fled directly to his study where he collapsed into his chair and began furiously writing a letter.

Helen closed the book on her lap and crept to her father’s study. She hung in the doorway, watching him tilt a candle over the folded letter, yellow wax soaking the paper. He pushed a seal into it and sighed heavily, wiping his forehead with his sleeve.

Magnus was filthy. His clothing was torn and soaked in mud. There were scratches across his forehead, some of them bleeding and a deep gash over his hand which he’d covered with a piece of fabric from his shirt. She could smell the remnants of a peat bog and an overpowering dose of kerosene in the air.

“Father,” she whispered, catching Gregory’s attention. He looked up at Helen as if he’d forgotten all about her existence.

“Helen – go to your room at once and lock the door,” he instructed. Gregory undid the lid on one of the crystal vessels containing scotch. He did not bother with a glass, swigging directly from the bottle. “Quickly!” he hurried her, when she failed to move.

Missing for weeks and now he turned up, looking like he’d spent that time crawling through sewers. “Why?” she asked, stepping into the room. Gregory would have none of this, flaring into an uncharacteristic rage.

“ _This is no time for, ‘why’!”_ he yelled, swiping the letter off the desk and burying it in his coat. “Do as I say and I’ll come back for you.” Gregory moved toward her, snatching the metal poker from beside the fire on his way. “I am sorry,” he added, calming enough to kiss his daughter on the head. “But you _must_ hide. Promise you will do that for me. Take this,” he added, withdrawing a small package wrapped in damp brown paper and fastened with string. “Hide it. Keep it safe.”

There was a terror in his eyes that halted her questions. Helen simply nodded, puzzled and let her father vanish back onto the streets, consumed by the night.


	8. Secrets, Lies and Stolen Truths

Helen turned and took the corridor at a run, flinging the door to her bedroom open, not caring as it slammed against the wall. She held the mysterious parcel tightly as her eyes searched the room. Shelves, trunk, lamp-lit desk – all too obvious. Her heart pounded. She had never seen her father afraid before – fearful, yes, before any new experiment his eyes would widen, darken with the wonderful dread that the unknown provoked but tonight he had been truly afraid.

She caught the door as it bounced back and locked it, sliding down its surface until she hit the ground.

“ _Think...”_ she eyed the room until a smile flicked across her lips. Cedar drawers; well loved in this and their previous life. Helen crawled over to them, sliding the bottom one open. She buried the parcel deep in the back, concealed by veils of lace and garters where no self-respecting thief would dare follow.

Helen had intended to stay put, hidden safely away as her father had instructed but as the seconds itched on she couldn’t bear it. Helen unlatched the door and returned to the foyer where she pulled a jacket from the hallstand and wrapped it around herself.

The trees, sparsely placed along the avenue, shivered. Their wet leaves glistened like a thousand mirrors to the moonlight until they broke loose and fell away, blanketing the ground. A wind kicked over Helen, catching her blond hair as she dodged soggy newspapers, tumbling over each other. She stepped between the soft circles of light beneath each lamp post. Her father was ahead, paused at the crossroad, unable to choose between the cracked veneers of stone walls.

Few people had the courage to venture into the streets after dark. Thieves swarmed like rats over the city, driven to desperation by an uncompromising age of enterprise. Even Oxford, the city of dreaming spires, could not escape the modern age with its silent class, rippling through the evening, flickering and dying. Helen knew that she hovered only just beyond their reach, only a few pounds from poverty.

Gregory Magnus chose the side street on his left. Helen closed in, bringing herself to a stop at the corner where she found a shadow and sunk into it. Archways and barred windows leaned over the street, boxing her and her father into a tunnel. The public lighting ended halfway down the cobble stone road leaving a sweeping shadow cutting off the remainder from existence. Beyond that curtain of darkness lurked all kind of street creature. Gregory approached it, tentatively walking along the dark edge.

Helen stepped back, making sure that she was hidden as the forms of several men emerged out of the shadows in front of her father. First, they appeared as a series of ghostly faces but gradually they grew into a set of well dressed businessmen. Her father turned to face them, drifting backwards cautiously, drawing his company out into the light.

“Doctor,” said one of them in greeting, slinking ahead of the others. He was a tall man with a leg that threatened to buckle with every step. He leant heavily on his cane as he spoke, “Trying to escape?”

Gregory chuckled nervously, checking the buttons on his coat before wiping a smear of mud off his neck with a handkerchief. “Of course not,” he replied. “I was – was looking for you.”

The remainder of the ‘pack’ waited behind, never quite making it into view. Helen stretched herself along the wall, inching closer. She was able to make out most of the conversation even though all parties kept their voices hushed.

“I am curious to see what our money had bought,” the man continued.

“You lied to me,” Gregory pointed sharply, white handkerchief still in hand. “I have done some of my own research – run into a few old friends. The Cabal may be a private research organisation but you are also in partnership with one of the most evil businesses this side of the century.” A train rattled past in the distance, screeching to a halt at Oxford’s new station. “You think that people won’t learn what you’re doing? The money that you paid me was no better than blood.”

The man glanced down at the pavement, lowering his voice into a harsh drone that broke intermittently as if his veneer of civility was cracking with it. “Enough of this time wasting.” His eyes returned to Magnus. “Where are the samples?”

“I destroyed them.”

He laughed. “That is your plan, Doctor?” he sneered, with an air of disbelief. “Poorly execute a lie and then expect me to simply _let you go_? You are a man of science, Magnus. I know what that means. Those samples are too important to your personal agenda to simply destroy. If you hand them over now, I may even let you keep one – as a gesture of good faith for our future business dealings.”

“I already told you, I destroyed them. Our arrangement is finished.”

There was a subtle tap of his cane on the ground. The others jumped forward, taking Gregory by the arms. They flung him against one of the walls so hard that he groaned, jarring in pain. The man rubbed his face, tired of people who fought the inevitable. Progress didn’t pretend to be pretty – it was brutal.

“One more time, Doctor.”

This time, a curl lingered on Gregory’s lips as his weather worn face grinned at the night. “You will never find them...” he whispered in defiance.

The man reached into his coat and brought out a gun, cocking it with a sinister click. Helen gasped loudly, covering her mouth too late to stop the noise reaching the huddle of gentlemen. They heard it, snapping their heads around to see a blonde woman hiding on the corner of the street, watching events unfold with more than a passing interest. Gregory saw her too and his heart sank.

“Bring her...” muttered the man.

Helen turned, hitched up her skirt, and bolted through the street, narrowly avoiding the hooves of a passing night-carriage which skidded to a halt behind her with a cloud of dust. The two men to follow navigated around the whining horse as it reared up.

“Whoa, whoa...” the coachman hushed, as the carriage tilted dangerously.

The park wall’s sandstone ripped her skirt as she half-jumped, half-fell over it, leaving tattered ends of lace flapping in the wind. Her pursuers cleared the wall easily, hitting the grass at a run as they searched and quickly found her not far ahead.

At night, the park was pitch black, protected by walls of trees keeping it well out of reach of the street lights. There were people moving about within it; lovers hiding away from the world, beggars curled up against the cold with animals stealing scraps from the grass beside them.

The ground was soft under foot. Helen was a strong runner but her dress tangled and caught under her feet. Soon she was tumbling down a gentle hill with her arms flailing as wet mud coated her. She was headed for a shallow pond which lay under the only gap in the trees. A perfect reflection of the moon was disturbed by a drifting duck, leaving a wake behind its furry form.

Helen’s world was a blur of cold, pain and blackness until the men plucked her from the ground and held her until she could stand.

“A little ‘thank you’ would be nice,” said one of them, still panting. Helen was trying to scratch her way free of them, shouting to anyone who would listen. “Water that cold, you might be dead.”

They dragged her back to the alleyway where the leader had been prompting Gregory for information, as evidenced by the fresh bruises.

“Claims she’s a working girl...” they said in unison. Helen looked the part with filthy, torn clothes, and ratty hair limply blowing in the wind. Her father didn’t dare look at her.

“Bring her with us?” it was a question posed by one of the men that had stayed behind. His knuckles were red.

The leader waved them off. “She’s cheap.”

“So what do we do with her, leave her here?”

Helen averted her eyes as the leader left her father and hobbled toward her, leaning heavily on his stick. “What did you see, sweetie?” he asked her, suggestively.

“Nothin’,” Helen mumbled, wincing as the two beside her tightened their grip.

“We better be sure,” he whispered back, leaning over her. She didn’t see his free hand raised above her head, about to come down sharply.

“Wait,” Gregory pushed off from the wall, stumbling forwards. “Wait,” he repeated. “Let her go – I’ll get your samples back.”

“Back?” the tall man withdrew his hand and eyed Gregory curiously.

“I scattered them so that you would never be able to locate them should precisely this happen.”

“But, if I let this working girl go – you’ll get them for me? Why?”

“That is my business,” said Gregory. “I need two weeks.”

“You try my patience, Doctor. I’ll give you one week and if you don’t present with the samples you promised and we paid for, then our next meeting will be less pleasant.” The man flicked his eyes up and his company threw Helen unceremoniously to the ground.

 

* * *

 

Helen and Gregory sat opposite each other, staring across Magnus’s desk in silence for a long time. She realised now that the secrets she thought that she knew about her father were pitiful in comparison with the truth.

He had taken hold of his quill, running the white feather through his fingers in an endless pattern. Gregory had no idea how to begin an explanation for his actions – his entire life. He tried several times but none of these attempts reached beyond a small clearing of his throat.

The firelight flickered behind them. Helen could not take her eyes off of her father. She decided to approach the issue from the side, step carefully around the elephant.

“The Cabal, they are a private research facility – research into _what_ exactly?”

This is the conversation that Gregory had spent his life avoiding, ever since the death of his wife Patricia, all those years ago in South America. “I am not certain,” he replied. “Though I suspect their interests are similar to mine.”

“Which are...” he was being intentionally cryptic, and Helen was sick of all the secrets.

“Helen,” he replaced the beautiful quill in its holder. “You have tremendous potential as a scientist. The lecturers must agree, otherwise they would have chased you off long ago –”

Helen stood from her chair, pacing away from the table in frustration. Slowly she turned, approaching once again but this time with an expression somewhere between tears and desperation.

“You,” she started, placing her hands on the table, “are the _most_ talented medical researcher I have ever known and yet you keep your most important work hidden from the world. From me.”

Gregory didn’t know how to respond. Somewhere along the way his daughter had grown up, changed from a little girl with a fascination of the world into a scientist as driven as him. Her questions had simmered for a decade and now they burned their way past him. He looked away as she continued, unable to face her sharp eyes.

“If you truly believe that I have potential father,” Helen leant even closer, resolute in her plea, “ _please_ help me achieve it.”

He had sworn never to do this but he could not refuse his daughter anything. She was intelligent, a little too much so for her own good. If he didn’t share with her his secrets she would hunt them out anyway. Without guidance – Gregory shuddered to think what she could become. There was more than a flicker of her mother in her.

Gregory took his daughter’s hand. He led her to the far back corner of his office to a door that she had never been through.

“The attic you know about by now,” he said plainly. “I admit, I let it happen but it is nothing but a storehouse for old notes and relatively benign research.”

Helen couldn’t explain why but she felt betrayed.

“This,” he continued, as he unlocked the door revealing a staircase descending to an underground level, “is the reason the university will no longer let me step inside its walls. Do you remember, when you were a small child the two men who came to visit me on your fourteenth birthday?”

“They were afraid of you,” said Helen. She remembered their argument.

He nodded. “Maybe. I told them that they had limited their imagination. In truth, I think it was their wallets whose limits I had reached. The board at the university could no longer endorse my research and so I was forced to look for financial assistance elsewhere. The Cabal offered me a grant that I could not turn down. There was no money, Helen. It was the only way that I could continue.”

“I still don’t understand what it was that was so terrible.”

Gregory led Helen down the stairs. She held a kerosene lantern in her hand, lighting the way for both of them. Her father switched keys and unlocked the final door but stopped shy of opening it. Helen thought she heard scratching and crying from behind the door, not unlike the sounds of James’s room that first night.

He handed her the key. “Once you enter this door, you are on a path that cannot be reversed.”


	9. Sanguine Vampiris

Helen raised the lantern, extending it into the room. Yards of heavy fabric lined the walls, tacked on to the ceiling and left to hang all the way to the dusty floor. Occasionally there was an outcrop of shelves made of solid, dark wood. Some of them had fine-netted wire nailed across their compartments and locks through their handles. As she stepped toward them, she realised why. Rat-like creatures scattered away from her light, huddling in the corners of the bookshelf amongst scraps of food.

She panned the lantern across the laboratory where it caught the edges of a table. It was a bare thing, lonely at the heart of the room. There were networks of grooves carved into it which led to a tin bucket on the ground where dark patterns of a mysterious liquid were layered in stains.

In the far corner, the light picked out a pair of golden eyes which opened slowly, staring back at her. Helen stepped closer, slipping from her father’s grasp. She had gone this far – Gregory could not stop her. All of his secrets were now hers to share.

Two curved horns, half a foot long, tapered into sharp summits. They protruded from scarlet fur, bunched tightly together in uneven tufts. Like a cat’s pelt, it had two layers – a harsh, needle-like exterior with yellow tips and a second, downy coat which kept the creature warm. Except – it wasn’t fur but feathers.

Gregory lit two of the lamps hanging from the ceiling and the room flickered into light. Helen raised her hand to her mouth to cover a gasp. A pair of wings – fragile sheets of skin, were folded onto the creature’s back. She could see two enormous paws as big as tea-saucers which it used to rest its head on while a tail curled around its body, twitching as Gregory whispered things to it.

Helen thought that it looked just like a –

“Dragon, yes,” Gregory whispered. “At least, that’s the conclusion I have come to. I found this poor thing four months ago while I was in London. It was, well, _smaller_ then but how could I leave it in alley? My guess is that it was dumped by a black market animal trader. They swarm around the Cabal, making their pickings on capturing and selling Abnormal creatures.”

“No,” she whispered, unable to get over the ‘dragon’ part of her father’s sentence.

“It is an _Abnormal_ , Helen.” He took his daughter’s hand, resting beside her as she continued to watch the creature. It eventually grew bored of the intrusion, closing its golden eyes and returning to sleep. “The cornerstone of monster stories since man picked up a pen. _This_ ,” he pointed in particular at the dragon, “is a species of reptile yet sadly I do not know where to return it. I doubt that it was born in London’s streets... There are hundreds of creatures like him, hidden away or captured by agencies like the Cabal for private research. They – they torture them and destroy whatever’s left. I can’t keep him forever, though,” Gregory added, frowning as he lowered his eyes.

Helen read her father’s journals but this – this was beyond what she could have dreamed. Worlds were unlocking, secrets unravelling and she found her heart pounding against her lungs.

“Helen, the blood samples that I acquired are from an Abnormal that not even I believed could exist. I stumbled across them once, many years ago now and decided that they were too dangerous to approach again. Vrykolakas, strigoi, upír, impundulu, _Sanguine Vampiris_ ,” Gregory rolled the words, hushing them as if each syllable was fear enough. “Vampires...” he whispered to her, like a bedtime nightmare crawling into a corner.

“Their blood is one of the most powerful substances on Earth and the Cabal would like nothing better than to get their claws onto it. They paid me _exceptionally_ well to collect samples. You, have one of them.”

Helen guessed it to be the mysterious package her father had left in her care earlier that night.

“I entrust you to study and learn from it in my absence, while I hide the remaining two where the Cabal will never find them. All of this,” he waved his arms over the room, “is in your care. Now, listen carefully, these are resourceful people. They are going to come looking for me after the week is up but you are a woman, my daughter. Use that, feign frivolity, make them believe that you know nothing more than needlepoint and they will leave you alone.”

She nodded very slowly. That night, her father was gone. He left a half-dried bundle of petals, shrivelled but alive as they clung to the vine creeping out from a mysterious pot. The wild rose had suffered from its journey but its tortured form perked whenever Helen drizzled water over it.

 

* * *

 

James and John were displeased with each other after a minor disagreement over the origin of _Vampires_.

The five of them had found themselves an abandoned corner of the library – the _old_ side, of course, as it was James’s turn to pick a nook for their weekly discussion. He paced in small circles between the shelves, a book resting open in his hand as he read the lines of text aloud to his audience.

Helen was listening with an air of discontent. They were mocking her, all of them in their own subtle ways, ever since she had told them of her father’s research. Nikola was at her feet, apparently preferring the floor. He was asleep and snoring quietly with his head balanced uncomfortably between two encyclopaedias of ancient history.

It was John who took the greatest interest in James’s speech. He was reclined in one of the library chairs which they had stolen from the main room and stowed in their private corner. Over the hour, his feet had stretched out on top of the table allowing him to balance a book on his knees which he glanced at several times, awaiting his turn to rebuff James’s argument.

 

“ _And as softly thou art sleeping_

_To thee shall I come creeping_

_And thy life’s blood drain away.”_

 

James was enjoying this, far more than was reasonable. He had always be a showman, albeit only to a select few. He traced the lines with an outstretched finger –

 

“ _And so shalt thou be trembling_

_For thus shall-”_

“Really,” interrupted John, aware of the poem’s conclusion. “Is this appropriate, considering our _company?_ ” He deliberately kept his eye away from Helen, knowing that her frown had twisted into scowl. James ignored him.

 

“ _For thus shall I be_ kissing

_And death’s threshold thou’ it be crossing_

_With fear, in my cold arms.”_

The book snapped shut, waking Nikola.

“You get the general idea,” Watson laid the book on the table beside John. “And that, my dear John, is the beginning of the Vampire in Literature. Case closed.”

John sighed heavily.

“There are no such things as ‘vampires’ – except perhaps in farm boys’ drunkin’ stupors.” Nigel squeezed between two shelves with a fresh arm of books. “And perhaps your literature,” he conceded, handing James another book.

“I don’t know,” James inspected the man on the floor beside Helen, as Nikola yawned at the room. “Nikola’s pale enough to be one, especially with those sharp teeth he likes to flash.”

“Excuse me?” Nikola replied, sleepily. “Did I provoke you in some way?”

“Your _existence_ provokes me.”

“Your reading _bores_ me,” he retaliated.

“I agree with Nikola, for once,” John added, flipping through the pages of his own book. Stirring the room was the pastime he liked best.

“Enough. Enough. _Enough_.” Helen rolled her eyes and fell against the wall of books, sliding down it in defeat. She landed beside Nikola in a swirl of dust. He flinched in alarm, holding his breath.

James was not finished with Nikola yet. “I _particularly_ enjoyed cruising through your latest work of poetry-” he said, slipping a scrap of crumpled paper from his coat. Nikola recognised it at once, and coughed in panic, stumbling to his feet – an action which failed as one of his legs had fallen asleep.

“My – _what_?” Nikola grunted, as pain constricted his leg muscle, rendering him useless as James straightened the paper. “How did you – where did you get that from?”

“It was just _lying_ on your floor last time you invited us to that spectacle of yours.” James’s finger still hurt, burnt by an ‘accidental’ passing of current which Nikola had spent _hours_ making certain that it would do precisely that.

“That is private,” Nikola hissed.

James began to read. It was a scant few lines of scattered birds and thunder storms, beautiful enough in construction. Nikola clawed his way back to his feet, his cheeks reddening with every word falling from James’s lips.

He lunged once but James dodged him easily. John threw his head back in a silent laugh, delight ripping the corners of his mouth into a broad smile. Nigel turned away. It wasn’t that he liked Tesla – more that he didn’t hate him.

“Fine,” Nikola’s voice wavered, his usual pride shaken. “Keep it.”

He left, sidling out between the rows of books and back into the main library where he finally vanished from their sight.

“Excellent,” Helen curled her knees up to her chest, pinning her skirt down beneath her arms. It billowed uncomfortably around her. “Look what the two of you have accomplished. Not very clever considering neither can coax a current from a coil. You realise, Nikola was going to help you. He wrote up the notes on his motor, they were in his pocket.” Helen returned to her feet and collected her things from the table beside John. He shifted his feet as she approached. “Enjoy your spoils, gentlemen.”

Before leaving, she approached a stunned James and took the paper from between his fingers.

Nigel had kept quiet, his arms still laden with books. Often, especially at times like these, he liked to think of the other four as elements of nature – as strong in their opposition as their passion. They did not mix but could not keep apart either. It was an impossible system that would eventually destroy itself. Nigel could see that day approaching but he hindered its arrival as best he could by keeping the shaky peace.

 

* * *

 

Their way of apology was to entertain Helen’s ‘vampire’ tale as truth. Nigel’s idea.

“We’ll have to get a look at it,” James said, lowering his voice though the four of them were alone in the dormitory. “See if this sample really contains _special properties_.”

Helen had not forgiven them but was nonetheless keen for their help.

“I won’t move it,” she replied. “The Cabal could be watching the house. You would have to come to it.”

“It is not as if you live in India,” smirked Nigel, hinting that the others should show more enthusiasm. They did, eventually acknowledging that they could probably meet in two day’s time.

“What about Nikola?” asked James, feeding the pig rooting around its box.

“I will speak with him,” said Helen sternly. “It’s been almost four hours; maybe he’ll have forgotten your joke.”

Helen doubted it but she went to the hallway where Nikola’s attic lived anyway. The stairs were up, pulled well out of her reach.

“Nikola...” she called, loud enough for him to hear. It was afternoon and last classes of the day were drawing to their end. All but one room in his hallway was empty, and it was far enough away not to be troubled by her efforts to catch Nikola’s attention.

He didn’t respond yet she _knew_ that he was up there.

“If you proceed with this, I will be _forced_ to climb out the window and up into your room the hard way,” she threatened, casting her eye over the window to gauge whether it was possible to carry out the threat. To her amusement, it seemed that it was. A latch, not a lock, secured the window and when open, it would be big enough for her to scramble through.

“Nikola?” she tried again.

 

* * *

 

“Will he come?”

John was packing his things, preparing to leave. It was a decent ride to the inn which he was calling ‘home’ until the university approved his residency.

“Why are you asking me?” John paused, turning to Nigel. “I guess, Helen will probably convince him – she usually does. Tomorrow?” he changed the subject. “The meeting’s on the grass by the oak tree. I’m hoping for a fine day.”

 

* * *

 

She heard the footsteps first – light and quick across the ceiling. Helen turned as the hatch to the attic rattled, opening out into the hallway. A set of stairs slid down to her. She couldn’t see Nikola anywhere above. Usually, he waited for her with a smile, or outstretched hand beckoning her up.

Nikola was located by the window, brushing fragments of broken glass of the sill. He had been doing that for weeks but there always seemed to be more of it.

“There you are,” she said, approaching cautiously.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Der Vampir - The Vampire (1748) by Heinrich August Ossenfelder. A short German poem, one of the first appearances of 'vampire' in literature.


	10. Child of the Storm

The first soft flecks of rain hit Nikola’s cheeks, lingering for a moment on his pale skin before sliding along the contours of his face. They dripped onto the window sill as Helen paced slowly along the opposite wall, carefully unfurling the scrap of paper with Nikola’s poetry. She placed it on the floor beside his bed before making her way to the window.

“Leave...” he said coldly, staring out at the city. It was growing dark now. The thick clouds quickened the hours, sending Oxford into premature night. For once, he didn’t want the storm. His experiment was not ready, left as an unfinished heap of metal on the roof.

She was going to tell him that the others were sorry but there was little point – it was not true and he would certainly not believe it.

“I know that you need help,” she said instead, “and I already promised.”

Sometimes he hated her memory.

“It’s too late,” he said, staring at the swirling clouds. “The rain is here and next – the lightning.” If it attracted a stray shard of electricity before he could fix it, then there’d be a great smouldering mess on the roof to contend with.

“When did a little rain hurt anybody...” she smiled, crossing the room.

To his confusion and distress, Helen nudged him away from the window and quickly climbed out of it, ignoring Nikola’s protests.

“Helen!” he said in alarm, as she clung to the wooden joins and searched for three stones protruding from the building’s facade. She had seen him use them a dozen times to climb the short distance to the roof. The light drizzle was cold and made the rocks slippery but her grip was firm and in a flash, Nikola was left with an empty window. “Mad, mad woman,” he muttered, stepping onto the sill in pursuit, forgetting his anger.

 

* * *

 

“Hypothetically,” said Nigel, pulling another blanket around his back. Their room was always cold despite the dozen or so lamps they kept lit. “If this sample of blood really is what Helen says, how are we going to test it?”

James tapped the nib of his quill on the edge of the ink bottle. He was seated at a desk shoved unkindly against one of the walls near their beds, scratching out a late assignment.

“Really, Nigel,” he said, with a measured voice, “I didn’t think that I would need to remind you of Doctor Magnus’s reputation.”

“I don’ follow,” replied Nigel, even though he did. Tales of Helen’s father were colourful and abundant but he was interested to know James’s take on the matter.

That was enough to distract James. He set the feather down and turned up the lamp next to him so that its flame flickered brightly.

“Doctor Magnus,” he began, with a theatrical air, “was head of the Oxford University Medical Research Board until four years ago. He drove several colleagues to resign their post and a further to be transferred. Word was that his experiments made the money men squeamish – not an easy thing to accomplish. Officially, he retired into obscurity but a man of his standing and position should have been enjoying his glory years. No one in the industry would touch him after that. Most think that he lost his mind, myself included.”

“You’re a harsh judge of character. Still, I’m curious – hypothetically of course... Is it possible that there could be a shred of truth? Doctor Magnus may have been insane but Helen –”

James shrugged. “If this blood of hers is real, we would have to test it on a living thing.”

“Good luck getting that idea past John, he has a tight grip over Helen these days and Nikola will probably hurl again.”

“I thought that _rats_ might be an acceptable halfway point to all parties.”

“Inject a rat with ‘vampire’ blood. Now there’s a notion for your fiction books.”

“You are enjoying this...” James couldn’t help but smile. Nigel rarely found pleasure in life, so to see his lip curl in wicked plotting was a welcome change. “I guess we shall find out.”

 

* * *

 

It was higher up that she had expected. The university’s roof sloped sharply and Helen found that she had to slip her hands between the terracotta tiles to steady herself against the wind as she worked her way toward a contraption of wire mounted on a relatively flat rise ahead.

Nikola had been right about the storm. From up here, she could clearly see it brewing over the city, churning into a dark mass of vapour. Every now and then it rumbled.

“Careful,” Nikola muttered behind her, scampering across the roof. He had done this a thousand times and navigated the slippery tiles easily.

“They just _let_ you leave all of this up here?” she said, pointing at his experiment. Helen regretted letting go of the roof, stumbling before Nikola caught her hand and led her to the relative safety of the platform.

“Strictly? No...” he admitted. “But I think that one of the professors is curious so they let it go.”

“Our lecturer? Maybe he just wants a decent excuse to have you expelled,” she lifted an eyebrow curiously, as she stepped onto the platform with the experiment.

“Maybe. I am undecided,” Nikola grinned. He handed her several wires and balanced a long antenna on her lap while he dug through his experiment, connecting bits of it. “You’re no help at all,” he said to her, when he tried to retrieve the antenna. Helen had the wires twisted around it in infinite loops which he struggled to undo.

Nikola worked frantically, with the rain getting heavier. She hadn’t meant to but Helen found the sight of Nikola in a full suit, perched on the roof like a curious bird – dripping wet and tangled up in cords to be highly amusing, especially when he overbalanced. She stifled a giggle, dodging his glare as cold wind made the rain more unpleasant.

Soaked through, they finished setting the experiment. Helen and Nikola took a step back, staring for a moment at the fragile thing reaching up toward the crazy expanse of sky. It was hard not to feel the enormity of the world behind the city – to see civilisation as a small scramble on the landscape sheltering under a sky to which humanity could lay no claim.

“I see why,” she started, “you spend your time up here.”

 

* * *

 

James jolted, smearing ink over his page as the thunder continued to roll on outside their window.

“That was close,” he said. The walls of the building were vibrating softly, rippling with the thunder. “I don’t think that Druitt is going to get his meeting outside tomorrow.”

“Must be a beautiful show,” Nigel pointed to the only window in their dormitory which remained blocked by cloth and wood. “A shame – I think I may go and watch the storm for a while.”

James shrugged, attempting to salvage the page. “As you please,” he said. “Would you mind,” he nodded at the pile of paper beside Nigel’s bed, “if I skimmed through your notes?”

 

* * *

 

Three rivers of light appeared from the cloud above and snaked their way in jagged steps toward the ground. Their light cut through the heavy rain as they intertwined, crossed each other and flashed several times in silence.

Nigel watched the shards of light, waiting for the inevitable lashing of air which always coupled the beauty. He held onto his notes tightly, not daring to leave them unattended in James’s company.

 

* * *

 

After the light, Helen could barely make out the dark lines of the roof. She blinked the rain from her eyes and turned to Nikola.

“Can you hear that?” he said, staring out into nowhere. Helen frowned, all she could hear was the rain lashing at their faces and the occasional gasp of thunder as the lightening approached. “That sound...” Nikola seemed lost to the world as he raised a hand up to the storm, moving it through the rain. He could hear hooves pounding into the wet earth – a distant cry as a horse rose up on a child.

“Nikola!” screamed Helen, as he tilted dangerously forward.

Nikola snapped out of the memory as another flash of light strangled the darkness from the sky.

“We should go,” he said, fearing that he had waited too long. The storm was here and they were still balanced precariously on the roof next to a lightning conductor.

 

* * *

 

Nigel was on the ground floor, pacing along the protected walkway of the eastern wing of the building. He thought he heard a woman’s voice cry over the thunder of the storm. Frowning, he edged toward one of the archways, leaning into the rain enough to see the opposing rooftop.

He saw two shadows make their way across the rooftop. They looked so fragile, scampering in the face of such a storm.

Helen and Nikola, it could be no-one else. Nigel shook his head as they neared the edge of the roof. Then, from nowhere, a stream of light ripped through the air and blinded him. Thunder, so heavy that Nigel felt his soul take shelter as it beat against his body. He dropped to the ground in a scatter of paper, holding his ears as the ground shook.

 

* * *

 

The tiles on the roof shattered beneath them. Helen fell first, grasping desperately as she began to slide toward the edge. The world was so bright she could not see. The air splitting beside her was so violent that the end of all things may have only been a step behind. She couldn’t hear Nikola, falling behind her, his hands forgetting the roof and reaching only for her.

Suddenly there was nothing beneath her. The light vanished leaving only the violent reverberations and the sound of tiles plunging four stories to the ground, exploding on the pavement below.

Her body jerked as Nikola caught her arm. The sudden weight pulled him over the edge with her until he wedged his hand between the guttering and brought them to a stop. They hung there in the rain, swinging gently.

Out of a daze, Helen realised that she would soon hit the ground far below them. Nikola had caught onto her sleeve and fabric was stretching, beginning to rip away from its seams.

There was nothing Nikola could do except grimace through the pain as the sharp gutter edge cut into him.

The rain beat down harder as another wave of thunder brushed over them.

Helen tried to reach the wall with her other hand, but she was too far out to do anything but graze the cold rocks with her fingertips.

Now the gutter protested, snapping two of its bolts sending Helen and Nikola two feet closer to the ground. Nikola hung on, but Helen’s sleeve ripped open. She reached up with her other hand just before Nikola lost his grip.

There was blood trickling down Nikola’s wrist. Even with two hands, Helen could not hold on. Another gust of wind would be enough to knock her free.

“Nikola!” she shouted over the noise.

Nikola swallowed, feeling her slip further. “ _Helen..._ ” he whispered, as she fell from his hold.


	11. Unbreakable

Nigel vaulted over the low stone wall and out into the storm leaving a volley of papers churning behind him.

Every echo of thunder made his body shudder as it continued to rumble in the sky above. The ancient gods were at each others’ throats, tossing bolts of light and snarling into the dark. He could hear their violence – the clashing of swords and procession of Grecian boots through the clouds.

The lawn was partly submerged and Nigel struggled to cross its muddy expanse. Once he stumbled, landing on his knees amidst a blur of water. That’s when he saw it again – a horrible image that he could not shake. Nigel grunted and made it back to his feet. He pushed forward, heading toward the other wing of the building where he had seen a shadow fall.

He raised his arm against the weather, inhaling more water than air. Nigel couldn’t understand why the world moved so slowly or how it was possible to count the heartbeats out of step with his breath while the droplets of rain hesitated, lingering for a moment before striking his face. Whatever tempo the world was supposed to dance to, it had been offset since that lightning strike.

Nigel found her almost at once, laid awkwardly on the cement pathway surrounded by broken roof tiles. The sky flashed again and again, vanishing the world in an eerie light. Nigel paused, water streaming over his eyelashes. Helen’s blond hair had scattered around her head, glistening in the rain as if full of jewels. Beneath this carpet was a dark puddle, diluted by the rain into a general crimson aura.

She must be dead. It was all he could think. Her stillness held back his breath as he bent down to Helen and placed his fingers lightly beneath her chin.

He waited, ignoring another dart of light above as he searched for a faint glimmer of life.

“ _Oh gods...”_ Nigel startled, as Helen opened her lips and took a gasp of air. He whipped his hand away when her eyes slowly opened, staring blankly into the night.

“Nikola?” Helen whispered. Her vision was a muddle of indistinct forms but she could sense someone leaning over her, shaking.

“Nigel,” he corrected Helen, reaching behind her head. He wove his fingers through her blood stained hair until he cupped her skull gently and eased her off the ground with his other arm around her shoulders. He searched for the wound responsible for the bloody mess on the pavement but found nothing except an acute tenderness to his touch.

She flinched away from him.

“I feel – _strange_ ,” she said, as he forced her to sit.

“I am amazed that you feel anything at all,” he commented, glancing up at the roof of the university. It was a long way up to the damaged pipe, jutting out from the rest of the gutter. Beneath Helen was a sea of blood from a so far phantom wound. He had to get her somewhere safe and dry and inspect her more closely. A fall that large – there had to be repercussions.

“Wait,” she protested, as he lifted her from the ground. It was a struggle for Nigel. He had never been a strong man but in this he was determined. “Nikola...”

Nigel searched the dark walls of the university but the pathways were empty. “He’s not here,” he said, heading for the main gates where the occasional coach hurried past with a crash of hooves.

Helen turned her head, gazing over Nigel’s shoulder back at the silhouette of the building. There was no light in Nikola’s room. She remembered his hand, trembling with her weight as she swung from the building.

“He was...” she started, but Nigel had reached the road. He waved a one of the coaches over and bundled Helen inside of it.

 

* * *

 

He took her home.

Nigel set Helen onto one of the wooden chairs in the dining room and quickly fetched a basic medical kit from Doctor Magnus’s cupboard by the stairs. He returned to find her inspecting a ringlet of hair, curiously gazing at the red tinge that it had taken on.

“Let me,” he said, pulling a chair next to her. Nigel held a warm washer to her forehead, wiping the mixture of mud and blood off her porcelain complexion. For the first time, he noticed her beauty. He’d always thought of Helen, perhaps unfairly, as a vindictive woman manipulating men to her causes via her obvious charm. John thought that he was crazy but Nigel held firm to his belief that there was a sinister edge to Lady Magnus. He often saw glimpses of it in the corners of her eyes when James slit his way through another test subject. She had even swayed the impersonal Tesla, coaxing some form of affection from him however reserved it might be.

Nigel wouldn’t go so far as to say that he was entranced by her, as the others were but maybe he could admit to being just a little curious.

“How perplexing,” he said, running the washer down her neck following a trail of blood. “You appear to be unharmed.”

“Maybe it’s not my blood?” she offered, catching his hand as it dipped a touch too low on her neckline. She would never guess that it had been an honest accident.

“It’s yours all right,” Nigel discarded the cloth in the tray, “search me as to how.”

They were both soaked and starting to feel the cold. Nigel was the first to rise, unbuttoning his coat as he headed to the fireplace. He busied himself lighting it, preferring to keep occupied as the awkward silence continued between them. Though they had spent many hours in each other’s company, they had never spoken alone and found themselves completely at a loss as to how to behave.

Finally, a flame flickered up through the logs and the first radiations of warmth spread into the room.

“You should change your clothes,” he mumbled at her. She nodded and vanished out the door. He heard her footsteps trail down the corridor until a door creaked open.

So this was the house of the great Gregory Magnus? Nigel had already picked out several unusual ornaments hanging from the opposite wall. He hovered over the fire, drying his shirt and pants until she returned to the dining room looking more like he was used to.

“Thank you,” she said, not taking that last step into the room, “for your help. I shall be fine now.”

“Helen, you are about as far from ‘fine’ as is possible.” Another silence. Nigel stifled a cough with his fist, turning back to the flames. His nose wanted to run, a curse from his childhood that led people to believe him perpetually in ill-health. “Now that I’m here,” he spoke to the fire, forcing Helen to venture into the room to understand him. “Would it be possible to see this mysterious sample of yours? I admit to being curious.”

Distraction – she welcomed it. “Certainly.”

Helen led him through her father’s office and down the stone steps to the basement. She caught him linger at the sight of the lab door, running his eyes over the solid planks of wood sealing its contents away from the world. They both held lanterns to the darkness as she unlocked the door and pushed it open.

The door revealed a black hole not unlike the gaping mouth of a cave. Nigel’s nose tweaked at the musty smell, heavily laden with mould spores. Helen dashed in front of him, wasting no time lighting several lanterns. The room now revealed certainly looked the part of a mad scientist’s den. As James had described Gregory Magnus, this scene suited him well – mysterious curtains, hanging lamps and equipment he didn’t want to know about. He’d almost accepted this as quite respectable – until a creature in the corner of the room growled.

“Holy – you did _not_ mention that,” he raised his lantern in the direction of the frightening creature.

“When I said, ‘Abnormal creatures’,” said Helen, with a smile he had seen used on unwitting victims of hers before, “what _exactly_ did you think that I meant?”

She had him there. In truth, he’d never really taken her stories seriously. “Honestly Helen, what _is_ that?”

Eventually Nigel got over the dragon – even daring to stroke its feathered coat. Finally Helen presented the sample of blood and even his untrained eyes could see that it was _special_ with its silken liquid swirling gracefully, its colour more rich than pure ink and its viscosity something between mercury and honey.

“I – wanted to apologise,” he offered, brushing his fingers over the glass holding the sample. “We did not have the best start.”

Helen nodded, but did not offer an apology of her own.

 

* * *

 

It was late afternoon of the following day when three gentlemen met in a dormitory, exhausted.

“Did you find him?” said John to the others, holding his side. It pained from running circles around the hundreds of intertwined corridors, ducking into every door in search of the missing man.

James and Nigel shook their heads, equally dishevelled.

“He’s not here,” James folded his arms, “or if he is, he’s lost a good deal of weight. I asked everyone I could find. Granted,” his hidden hand couldn’t help but dip into his coat pocket where a small gold watch nestled. “Most of them had no idea _who_ Tesla was in the first instance...”

“I called him the ‘mad one’,” quipped Nigel. “Mostly they just shrugged. If they did see him, they apparently don’t remember. It’s like he’s completely invisible to other humans.”

“I think that we should try to take this seriously...” James frowned in Nigel’s direction.

“What is there to do?” Nigel retaliated. “He is _gone_ and short of searchin' all of Oxfordshire –”

“Helen’s not going to be happy,” John sighed, interrupting Nigel. “We’ll never hear the peace of it if he doesn’t show tonight.”

 

* * *

 

John arrived at Helen’s door on the edge of dusk. The streets were full of business men making their way home from work and small children frisking pockets with nimble hands. The gas-lighters had started their rounds, cruising between the lamp posts with a taper as the smoke of the factories sank back to the earth, tarnishing Oxford’s air with a bitter taste.

The city’s forest of spires prodded at the darkening sky. Their sandstone was blackened by the relentless weather which chose to rain most of the time making them appear sinister against the skyline.

“Did you find him?” was Helen’s first question, as she let John step past her into the house. He shook his head.

“Helen, I am sure that he is fine,” he tried to reassure her.

“You clearly don’t know Nikola,” she replied sharply. “He is _never_ fine.”

“Tomorrow I will speak with the university heads myself if he does not arrive within the hour.”

She seemed to be satisfied with this – for the moment.

“Helen,” he reached down for her hand, which he took gently in his own. “There was something that I have been meaning to discuss with you...” he trailed off, glancing nervously at the floor rather than her confused expression. “Before all of this.”

His skin warming beneath her palm distracted her from John’s words. She found it difficult to focus on anything other than the slightest movement of his fingers and his quickening pulse.

“When I heard about what happened yesterday – I – I realised something – _important_ that,” he ventured a glance at her, regretting it almost immediately as his throat closed over. He coughed, swallowed and tried to continue. “And my timing is – well – regrettable but – _James?_ ”

Mr Watson strolled into Helen’s foyer with an air of importance. He had changed his waistcoat, apparently reverting back to his wealthy upbringing outside the university walls. This particular item of clothing was a luxurious shade of red, edged in golden thread.

His sudden arrival caused Helen and John to part, retreating to opposing walls of the entrance hallway.

James tipped his hat at them before removing it entirely.

“Afternoon,” he said in greeting – fully aware that he had just disturbed the pair. “Nigel will be here shortly. Are you certain that you are well?” James tilted his head slightly at Helen. She was paler than usual except for a bright flash of pink through her cheeks.

“Not you as well,” she turned away. “Honestly, I am surrounded by three old women.”

“Only two at the present,” James winked.

 


	12. Rats to the Slaughter

They waited the full hour but Nikola did not show. With the evening well underway and the moon striding above the city, the four young scientists descended the stairs to the underground laboratory.

Settled into various locations around the room – John by the door, Nigel knelt beside the dragon, James in front of the wire-faced bookshelves and Helen leaning on the central table – James theatrically spread his arms as if introducing some great Shakespearean work to his audience.

“I give you,” he bowed low, to the others’ amusement, “Exhibit A.” James Watson lifted the lid of the heavy wooden box by his feet. His surprise was a collection of furry creatures running from wall to wall of the box in a messy clamber.

“Rats...” Helen eyed James warily, leaning over the box with her mouth turned down in repulsion. “You brought me rats?”

James did not understand her dejected tone until Helen held a light to the shelves beside them where five well fed rats, significantly higher in class, were busy devising their escape. He merely waved her off and said, “The more the merrier.”

He rounded hers into his box and placed them on the experiment table. The scratching and squeaking intensified until John had his doubts that the box would hold.

“I still don’t like this,” muttered John, watching Nigel prepare the metal needles and Helen walk the sample of blood over. James dipped the needle carefully into the enticing liquid, slowly drawing it up.

“Rats are a menace,” said James, tapping the shaft of the needle, “the city will be well rid of them.”

There was a rose leaning over the lips of a vase, slowly dying in the softly lit laboratory. It had dropped several petals on the main table but its perfume remained heavy, sweet and intoxicating. It masked the sour smell of the air and had not been there the last time Nigel had called.

John smiled at the wild rose, admiring its fragile and fading beauty. He wanted to hold the delicate thing in his hands but he knew that the slightest touch would destroy it.

Nigel held the squirming rat securely in his hands. It lashed out with sharp teeth and knife-like claws but he expertly clamped down, rendering it still as so that James could pierce its side with the tip of his needle. The creature screeched unhappily, kicking its toes while a small amount of the source blood was injected. Once finished, Nigel carried the rat to an empty compartment on the bookshelf and locked it inside.

The four scientists closed in, observing the shocked creature for several minutes. To their surprise, the rat did nothing – absolutely nothing of interest except clean its ear with a flexible paw.

“That was anti-climatic,” remarked Watson, still brandishing a full needle of blood. “Shall we do the others?”

“Of course,” replied Helen. “One subject is hardly a balanced test. We shall do them all.”

John closed his eyes and rested back against the closed door. He heard them repeat the process again and again with all seven remaining rats and set them in the cage together. When John finally roamed over to the others, he found the rats seated quietly on their back legs, sniffing the air.

“Those are the most docile rats I have ever seen,” he said, staring through the wire. The rats didn’t even notice him trace his hands over their enclosure or feel his warm breath on the air. “Are they in shock?”

“Quite possibly,” said James, handing the empty needle to Nigel who wiped it, wrapped it in cloth and tucked it back in the medical bag.

“Give it time,” Nigel added, joining them. “When we administer medication to animals on my father's property it can take up to – did you hear that?”

The others looked at him curiously.

“Hear what?” queried Helen. Her blond hair was hitched out of the way, fastened by dozens of soft metal pins. Every now and then the lamp light caught one, making it flicker.

“Could have sworn I heard some kind of banging.”

It dawned on them as a collective.

“The Cabal?” whispered John. Helen moved toward the door.

“They watch the house,” she replied. “A man in a brown suit, topper and cane stands at the corner in the mornings and late afternoon.”

“Was he there today?” John handed her one of the lanterns.

She shook her head. “No, I thought that it was strange.”

“Let _us_ go,” said James, hinting at John and Nigel. “Perhaps they won’t be so bold.”

“Absolutely not,” she said sternly. “The last thing that I need is to cast suspicion on myself by entertaining three men at this late hour.”

“Very well,” agreed John. “We will accompany you to the door all the same.”

 

* * *

 

Helen waved the shadowy figure she assumed was Nigel off as she approached the tortured surface of the front door. She could see the others, scattered in dark corners ready to pounce on her command.

The door knocked again. It was urgent – demanding and not what she had expected of the Cabal whose figures had always been imposing statues.

She took a breath, holding it in her chest as she unlatched the door and drew it open a crack.

Although the night was clear and the rain of late banished to the edge of the horizon, the first thing that Helen heard upon opening the door was the steady drip of water. She stepped to the side, opening it further to reveal a man shivering in her doorway.

“So,” he started, his voice shaken, “it _is_ true then.”

He had seen her eyes still and glazed, covered in a layer of mist – her hair about her face mingling with flows of blood as she lay there. The sight of her, shattered on the pavement below him amongst the ruined tiles was one that he could not move. Helen Magnus was dead. He had seen it, felt it – mourned it and, until this point, _believed it_.

“Nikola...” she said, but he avoided her hand, edging away. “You look as if you have drowned,” Helen observed his state. “We have been so worried. Nikola, where have you been?”

Nikola did not wish to talk about his whereabouts. What he wanted was a very particular answer from the woman glancing nervously behind her at the house.

“I _know_ what I saw,” he said softly.

“We,” she stared, stammering as movement stirred in the house. “We shall talk later, I swear.”

 

* * *

 

After, Nikola was ushered in and offered a change of clothes – which he naturally declined. Nearly against his will, he was herded to the basement. James managed a vicious aside, sprouting something about ‘wandering souls causing trouble’ to which Nikola darkened his offended temper.

“I take it that I have missed the show,” said Tesla, observing the empty table with Nigel’s bag already packed and stained brown in patches.

“The opening act, perhaps,” replied Nigel, waving Nikola over to the ‘bookshelves’ where the four of them had assembled. “Oh dear...” he sighed, upon arriving. At the edges of the cage were two suspiciously still furry bodies, feet-side up with their mouths left agape from a final breath. “We lost two – not that I can say I’m surprised. They were scrawny things to begin with.”

Though he was positive that Nigel had just insulted his choice of test subjects, James kept quiet and instead observed that there was a drizzle of blood on both the deceased rats’ noses. He deduced, therefore, the cause to be internal bleeding from one or multiple organ failure.

“And what of the others?” Helen asked.

James shrugged. “They seem fine at the present. _That one_ ,” he pointed at the rat huddled in the far corner, scratching feverishly at something, “is a bit rabid for my liking.”

“I don’t know,” John tapped the wire near a particularly docile rat. It was plump, seated and staring off into space. “This one looks about ready to depart from life.” It did not bother to flinch as John proceeded to rap beside it. The creature’s beady eyes gazed up at the soft lamplight beyond its bars, considering the world it had never noticed before and reflecting on its captivity.

Nikola refused to come any closer being generally repulsed by rats and all other creatures of the gutter. He did, however, notice the gentle tickle of hairs lifting from the back of his hand, standing erect. _Static electricity_ he mused, though he could not determine its source.

Suddenly there was a _snap_ and coruscation near the edge of the wire where Helen and James were leaning in close. They both jumped back, as did the rat which had grazed the wire with its claws and caused a serious spark of electricity to erupt.

The rat was as shocked as the humans. The action itself had not _hurt_ but it had certainly been frightened by the loud crack.

This time, Nikola rudely parted his way through the others and folded his lofty figure over to bring his eye in line with the rat. It was not _fat_ as John had assumed but rather ruffled. All of its wiry hairs were sticking out making it appear like a pompom with teeth and a tail.

“ _Do it again..._ ” he goaded the rat, which to everybody’s surprise seemed _drawn_ to Nikola’s keen eyes.

Slowly, its paws hopped closer, stopping all the time to sniff the air and shake its whiskers.

“What are you doing, Nikola?” asked Helen, bending down beside him.

“An experiment of my own,” he replied. “Here we go...”

Again, the rat touched the wire mesh producing a violent spark of electricity. This time it squeaked angrily, and retreated back beside the two dead rats where it set about cleaning itself.

“Well,” observed James, “it certainly wasn’t doing that before...”

“Incredible...” said Helen. “The source blood must have – I don’t even _know how_ , allowed it to – Nikola, could you help?”

“I am not a naturalist,” he said frankly. “Though I can only presume that it is drawing on the natural potential difference between the ground and air and converting that into static potential energy.”

“But what Helen asked was _how_ ,” John grinned menacingly.

“Perhaps you would be so kind as to take a stab yourself ... or is your position in this group merely ornamental?”

“Not to interrupt,” said Nigel, “but that rabid one of yours James, is getting rather close to – _oh_!”

They all watched on in horror as the rat in question flexed its claws, creeping up behind one of the ordinary rats and then, without warning or hesitation, leapt on top of it, sinking its teeth hungrily into its kin’s neck.

“That’s horrible!” Helen held a hand over her mouth as the rat drew blood, crushing its victim with powerful jaws and unusually sharp teeth. Its eyes were jet black orbs, enlarged as if someone had cut a planet in half and stuck them in place between the fur.

The victim rat expired. Its final kicks died silently while its plight went unnoticed by all but the blasé rat which backed away when the murderous gaze of the rabid one fell upon it.

“Christ,” said Nigel, “did you see that? Ferocious furry bastard. Sorry, Helen...” he apologised, for swearing in the presence of a lady.

“Amazing –” began James, but he was interrupted.

“Not my first choice of words,” John said, as the violent rat set its eyes on the electrically charged one.

“Well, if you would allow me to finish,” he turned away and roamed over to the experiment table as if in some kind of enlightened trance. “ _Amazing_ how it displayed characteristics reminiscent of rumoured vampirial behaviour. We can only assume that there is some truth in the myths and that, more importantly, this is indeed a pure sample of vampire blood.”

“Two results,” said Helen, “two deaths, one uncertain and three nil results, then.”

“No...” James pointed at one of the previously unnoticed rats. “Not uncertain. I don’t know what it is but this specimen has changed.”

“So what do you think?” Helen joined Watson at the table. She laid a hand on the satchel of equipment, stroking the leather suggestively.

“I’m in...” James could hardly contain his grin.

“In what?” Nikola shifted his gaze between the pair, trying to make them out as they began to pace around the table.

“Helen, you _cannot_ be serious,” John came up behind her, reaching for her hand. “See _sense_.”

“My decision, whatever it may be,” shot Helen coldly, “does not require your consort.” Her interest returned to James, “The possibilities are _wondrous_.”

“Excuse me,” Nikola began to pace from person to person, “what are we discussing?”

“Helen has a point,” admitted Nigel. “What we have just discovered, it is an opportunity that may well pass us by in a hurry. With the Cabal due on your doorstep,” he turned to Helen, “we are not guaranteed possession of this sample indefinitely.”

“I do not want to spend my whole life wondering...” James carefully picked up the vial of source blood, holding it to one of the hanging lanterns. A thing this beautiful had to be dangerous but there was more to its silken liquid than horror, he was sure of it.

John’s temper rose. “This might be your _whole life_ ,” he pleaded with her, “if we get this wrong. It would be unwise to make our judgement in haste.”

“Judgement on _what?_ ” Nikola slammed his fist down on the table, causing the vase with the rose to shudder and fall, crashing to its demise in a storm of petals.


	13. First Impressions

Three of the petals skimmed off the edge of the table, caught in a swirling current of air and then, after several graceful tumbles, they were laid to rest on the dusty floorboards.

Helen and James’s shoulder’s brushed. They stood united in feverish curiosity. The source blood had ensnared them with promises. It was a trap carefully laid with delicate snares that shuddered every time their eyes wandered in its direction.

James tilted the vial. He watched as the blood moved in luscious currents. Inside he saw a shimmering universe of stars, hidden places and secrets yet missed the darkness which crept out of sight.

While James’s motivations may have run to his physical advancement, Helen sought only knowledge. She wanted to know how far the human blueprint could be pushed – where the boundary between us and the beasts lay – _why_ she was different and if, as her father had hinted, this blood posed a cure for her condition.

“They are going to experiment on themselves,” said John, pulling away from Helen. He was deeply disappointed in her lack of self restraint. Maybe he was foolish but he had believed her to be different from the others.

Nikola’s face faded even further to a shade approaching pearl.

“That’s right, isn’t it?” John directed his accusation at Nigel, who looked away and muttered something that sounded like, ‘yes’.

John waited for Nikola to break into objection – dissolve into one of his fits of logic declaring Helen and James to be insane. Instead, Nikola clasped his hands behind him, catching his damp cloak so that its violet silken lining quivered elusively in the candle-light.

“Why?” Nikola asked calmly, as if inquiring on the nature of two chemicals reacting.

“What kind of a question is that?” snapped John fiercely.

"A valid one,” replied Nikola in a sudden sharpness, “which was _not_ directed to you.”

“If we go around calling ourselves ‘The Five’, pretending to be a unified group, secret society or whatever it is we’re calling ourselves this time, then the question was directed at the room.” John raised his finger accusingly in Nikola’s direction. “The proposal is preposterous! Inject ourselves with something rumoured to be the most dangerous substance on earth – after watching several of the test subjects die and another turn murderous? No – it should not be done. We make fools out of ourselves, not scientists. The sacrifice,” he looked especially at Helen, desperately seeking for the woman he remembered from the park in her cold blue eyes, “is too great.”

“Everyone makes sacrifices for their profession,” said Nikola simply, sensing that Helen had begun to sway to John’s passionate words. When it came down to it, that was all the man was – one of _words_. John had never had any scientific credit in the group. He was always the organiser, liaison or walking map to the various towns he had travelled through. His contacts had been useful but now he was beginning to see the other side of science and its practitioners – the side that stood on the cusp of white cliffs, pondering the fall.

“Your coat is a beautiful weave,” Nikola observed. “Tell me, do you often think of those who cowered in the half-light, spinning its cotton into delicate patterns before giving out their breath?”

“To know...” said Helen simply, in reply to Nikola’s question. Her answer was elegant but true – the answer that she should have given him the first time he had asked her about her work.

“And you – Nigel?” Nikola was not surprised when he reluctantly agreed with Helen. Nigel always sided with the majority, like a swing voter trying to not to get swept away by a rip tide. “Then we are in agreement?”

Four of them nodded but the fifth shook his head angrily. “Certainly we are not!” shouted John.

“You want to know about _Flash_ ,” observed James, highly amused by the way Nikola had been courted by the biological sciences. ‘Flash’ was the name he had decided to give to the electrically charted rat. “Morality is not a question you care to consider, then. You prefer old fashion intrigue.”

“Begging your pardon, but my _morality_ is in a better stead than yours at the present.”

James frowned. Nikola couldn’t possibly know about... James’s eyes searched Nikola’s but he would have had more luck with a lump of coal. No-one had seen him leave those nights, escaping over the university lawn in the soft moonlight except perhaps for Nikola, whose window faced the gates and – and James had to admit that it was possible.

“And _yes_ ,” Nikola finished, “naturally the behaviour of the rats _intrigues_ me. I consider it my duty to discover the unknown,” smiled Tesla, “and I suspect that Helen would proceed with this experiment whether we were present or not, gentlemen.” He was right, she would have. “Which leaves us little choice.”

 

* * *

 

“The rats?” Nigel asked, as he unwrapped his medical bag once again and prepared the equipment.

“No change,” replied James, who had isolated the vampire rat and was now watching it tear at the bars. It was a feisty thing. The others were disturbed by its constant, high-pitched squealing and gnashing of its teeth over every surface.

“Not here...” said Helen suddenly, stopping Nigel. “Hidden away like this, it is not a fitting setting for what we are about to undertake.”

“She doesn’t want to die in a cellar,” winked Nigel. “Not classy enough for the lady. Where then?”

They settled on the lounge room. James arranged the chairs, Helen lit the lamps, Nigel readied the equipment, Nikola drew all the heavy drapes shut against the night and checked the locks on the windows while John made a nuisance of himself, sulking in one of the lounges.

Helen strode through the room. Her ornate dress dragged behind her, shifting the dust while her golden hair trailed down her back in soft ringlets, some of which had been messily pulled out of the way. All of them watched as she took her place on the chair. Her breath quickened, rising and falling with her chest as hear heart thrust her own blood faster.

She heard the scratch of material on the chair’s back as John knelt beside her. He had not said a word to her since the decision, instead choosing to bow his head so that his face hid beneath several stray strands of hair.

“What are you doing?” inquired Nigel, as Nikola paced over and relieved him of the needle.

“Forgive me,” he said, “but if anyone’s going to be injecting _this_ into Helen, it is to be me.”

“But...”

“We can’t very well let John do it as he would likely waste the blood to vex us,” Nikola was satisfied when John’s head snapped up in scorn. “There’s a strong possibility that James would splay Helen’s arm for entertainment and you, I apologise for saying, have a heavy hand. No – I shall do this and that is the end of it.”

By the light, Nikola drew the heavy needle from the vial, twisting it slowly in his fingers. It brimmed with blood. A spare droplet formed on the needle’s sharp, metallic tip, fattening until gravity tugged it free. He turned slowly with the needle held aloft. The room fell silent. As he inched toward Helen, the sound of his shoes over the floor pounded in their ears. Nigel shifted behind her chair, hawking the experiment eagerly.

She was frightened.

“ _And fury shall become us,”_ said James, _“knowledge, burn us and the world scorn us for the truth.”_ He moved respectively out of Nikola’s way as if he were carrying a newborn rather than a syringe.

“It’s ready,” said Nikola, coming to rest beside her. She stopped her breath entirely, desperate to appear calm. The colour in her face betrayed her to the others.

“You don’t _have_ to go first,” Nigel offered. It was, after all, strange to let the woman place herself in danger ahead of the men, of which there was a considerable number present. “John or I could have a go to start...”

John lifted his eyes disapprovingly as he was yet to decide upon his own fate. Still, he would allow himself to go first if it would save Helen.

“He’s right,” said James, “no need for unnecessary heroics. The side effects are completely unknown.” _In humans, at least_.

“Thank you gentlemen,” she finally took a breath. Her voice remained steady as she spoke, “But this experiment was of my design. I should be the one to prove its worth.”

“Helen,” John took her hand urgently. “You are certain?”

“We’ve risked too much to turn back now. We need to know. You may precede, Nikola.” She looked down and took another breath as Nikola ran his finger over her arm, nudging her sleeve out of the way. The pit of her arm trembled as the needle poised above her naked skin and his thumb slipped into position, resting on the plunger.

She could feel his heartbeat through their touching skin. It was raging, tumbling blood around his limbs but apparently not into the hand that refused to move. Nikola’s eyes flicked up. They were large and clear, giving her this final, silent chance to withdraw. He waited. She held her gaze fiercely.

Nikola slowly lowered his eyes to her arm and, with a hesitation of his own, brought the needle to her skin.

Nikola did not wait. Immediately he pushed it through her skin and began to expel the blood. Helen flinched. It was freezing – like icewater flowing into her – seeping through her veins as Nikola’s thumb pushed down determinatively on the plunger. As soon as he was done, her body shook. A sharp pain pulled her arm muscles tight and she heaved in shock, reaching blindly for Nikola and John’s hands. They both held onto her as the muscle contractions worsened and she fought to keep the pain at bay.

Nigel shifted, unclasping his hands and circling round the chair and over to his bag where he hunted through it. James did not move, instead he committed every detail of her reaction to memory. Nikola hastened a glance at John, both were lost for action as the pain turned to agony too extreme for Helen to bear.

“We’ve got to make it stop,” said John, as Nikola threw the needle to the ground and placed his other hand behind Helen’s back, forcing her forwards. “What are you doing?”

“She cannot breathe,” he replied. “Help me...” his elegant fingers had begun unlacing the back of her corset. John tried to protest but Nikola raised his voice angrily, “She’s _dying_ , Druitt!”

“Here,” James pushed through them and set about undoing the thousands of layers of ribbon with more skill than the others would give him credit for. He muttered halfway through about the absurdity of female attire until the bodice loosened and Helen gasped. “She looks better,” he said, when Helen’s breathing settled.

“Are you all right?” John lifted a hand to her face. She nodded.

“The pain is stopping,” she said. “Ah –” she closed her eyes, trying to concentrate on what she was feeling, “slight tingling in my arm and it was cold, very cold...”

“Metallic,” whispered Nigel. “Look at the way it glistens in the light.” He pushed the vial of blood aside next to the smelling salts which he had unnecessarily excavated.

“I am fine,” she let go of both men by her side. “It was just a shock. Well...” she flicked her hair back over her shoulder. “Who’s next?”

Nikola’s head fell into his hands as he collapsed to the ground beside the chair in relief. “A moment, please,” he begged her, as he leant against the chair.

“I shall go next,” James volunteered himself. “If you please, Nikola...” he pestered the man on the ground.

The others followed in quick succession, with John falling last – still muttering his disapproval as the needle sank through his skin. Their reactions were all the same – nothing. Aside from the initial prick, the four men had no supplementary side-effects to the injection. Much like the rats, they stood dumbly, inspecting their arms for irritation but found nothing except a small hole.

“That’s it then,” said James. “Whatever is done is done.”

“Now we must wait,” said Helen quietly. She still felt uneasy – ill even.

“We will stay with you tonight,” said John, and the others quickly agreed – as much for their own sakes as for her. Nobody wanted to be alone, for fear of what they had done and what they might become.


	14. The Invisible Man

“Urgh...” Nigel stumbled, dropping the books tucked under his arm as a sharp pain stabbed through his gut. It lasted for several minutes, pounding in ever-increasing waves. “Damn...” he whispered, kneeling down for his books once it had passed. Briefly, he wondered if it had been his ill-looking lunch but soon the dread sunk in and he realised the horrifying truth.

“Oh, it’s you – not a very polite entrance,” James commented, returning to his book as Nigel took his seat in one of the abandoned chairs. The screech of its wood over the floorboards was still busy reverberating off the tightly packed bookshelves when Nigel swallowed and rubbed his forehead.

“There’s something wrong with me,” said Nigel hurriedly, as his stomach turned again. “Are you listenin' to me?” he added, when James continued pacing disinterestedly, stopping only to pull another book free.

“I heard you,” he replied serenely, “I am only surprised by the length of time it took for you to reach this conclusion.”

“This is no time for jokes,” Nigel leapt up and snatched _‘Rights of Man’_ from him. “I think I’m in serious trouble,” he added solemnly, “and I don’ know what to do.”

 

* * *

 

“They’ve been no more fatalities,” whispered Helen under her breath to her neighbour, as the lecturer scratched various instructions on the board for them to copy. James, who had never sat in the second row before, shifted uncomfortably. “However...”

“‘However’ is not a good word,” he replied, knocking his quill from the inkpot. “Great god...” he grabbed for it and then promptly shifted out of the way of the ensuing ink trail. “Would you mind moving up a little?”

The lecturer cleared his throat, scratching the chalk harder on the board as the students re-arranged themselves noisily.

“You’ve got it _everywhere_ ,” scorned Helen, as she inspected the black stains on her fingers. How could a reserved creature create so much chaos?

“There are reasons why I sit alone,” he admitted. “The rats though, they are all still alive?”

“Yes,” she nodded, and then paused. “Except for the one that’s missing. Its health you’ll have to guess on.”

James mouthed, _‘escaped’_ as Helen went on to explain that one of the rats had levered open the bars with a spare scrap of wood allowing a mass exodus. She rounded the rest up by hand with John’s help but perpetrator could not be found.

“That’s not encouraging, on both accounts.”

“It scratched the floor of its cage up for the wood. I may not claim a great deal of knowledge on vermin behaviour but it does seem out of the ordinary.”

James’s face twisted into discontent. He leaned against the sloped desk, propping up his head with one arm. “And the macabre one?”

“Isolated,” she rolled her eyes and made a brief effort to copy the board’s notes. “Though it hasn’t touched its food. Why all these questions? You’re usually difficult to coax into speech. I assumed you'd prefer me to write a full report.”

“Nigel...” he lowered his voice, doing his best to evade the pair eavesdropping from behind. “He didn’t feel well so I had a friend of mine examine him and they found a small lump growing in the left of his stomach.”

This time the lecturer did not attempt subtlety. In an elegant sequence, he snapped his chalk in two and threw both pieces at James and Helen. The first they knew of this was the sharp impacts and white marks left on their foreheads.

“If you are determined not to listen,” he glared in their direction, “at least keep yourselves to a hush.”

 

* * *

 

“Do _not_ move...” Nikola instructed.

Against her usually rebellious tendency, Helen froze at the top of the ladder. Nikola rarely joked and she had cause to fear his experiments. This particular contraption had all the marks of sinister device with its wiry limbs trailing onto the floor beside him and one particularly thick wire stretched between two structures like a bridge.

“Watching?” he asked her, without turning around or stopping his fiddling. Her silence was taken in the affirmative. “There’s a switch on the floor beside you, would you be so kind?”

Helen, perched on the ladder, reached forward to the switch and flicked it. A snap of light gave way to an explosion of sparks. Nikola’s hands were caught on a live circuit which pushed raw current into him at such a rate that he couldn’t feel the pain. He jolted, shook and then fell backwards when Helen shrieked and switched it off.

The blackened skeleton of the experiment smoked innocently. Nikola rolled over with a groan.

“I – never – said,” Nikola gasped between waves of muscle spasms, “to turn – it – on... argh!” he held his hands up for inspection. They were intact but lightly burnt around the tips.

“You need to be more _specific_!” Helen climbed into the attic. She swept the cords away from him as he sat up. The usually immaculate man was in quite a state with his mop of dark hair stuck out in a dark halo, black smudges of carbon highlighting his strong features making his eyes more clear than she recalled and he had acquired a slightly burnt smell to his person. “A right state...” she scorned, trying to clean him up. He merely removed a pristine handkerchief from his pocket and saw to it himself.

“That was a little too exciting for my liking,” he said, shaking off the incident. “Twenty kilo-amperes and I lived, that must be a record of some form.”

Helen shook her head in disbelief. Near death incidents seemed to be a frequent occurrence when in his presence. “I’ve come about Nigel,” she started, helping him to his feet.

He seemed surprised. “Oh,” he let go of her, “I presumed it was about that _other_ matter. I have not forgotten your promised explanation, you see.” Indeed, Nikola did not forget anything that passed through Helen’s lips whether he desired to or not.

The roof, her fall – the thunderstorm. Yes, she did owe him an explanation. “It will have to wait,” she admitted, slinking over to the window which was still without its glass. _“You really must see to this,”_ she added quietly, before giving the details of Nigel’s condition.

“No...” Helen caught him, before Nikola could speak again, “he’s not imagining it. I am aware of his tendency to accentuate his many varied medical conditions but James had him inspected and there is a definite growth.”

“Nearly overnight,” Nikola said, slipping into deep thought. “There are creatures,” he started after a period of pacing from end to end of the room, “that have extra organs. A correspondent of mine has a certain interest in natural science. She has sent me several detailed drawings of –”

“ _She_?” Helen raised an eyebrow curiously.

Nikola ignored her. “We know that these _vampires_ or whatever you wish to call them, possessed abilities beyond our human grasp. It is natural then, that their internal structure may differ from our own.”

Helen turned her head and eyed Nikola keenly. A spark of truth flashed over her and she pointed in his direction, “You’re good...” she said, “exceptionally so.” Then she rushed past him, disturbing a cloud of black dust at his feet as she vanished into the manhole as quickly as she had come.

Nikola inspected himself, horrified at the filth accumulated around him. He had always been a clean person but today he found the concept of dirt intolerable to the point of absurdity. This morning the feeling had been so strong that he had made his bed three times and spent an hour washing.

 

* * *

 

“I’m _evolving_?” Nigel had been sat down in a remote corner of the library. Helen and James lurked off to the side, stealing looks at each other as their captive fought another wave of pain. “Am I dying?”

“It is impossible to tell,” said James. “There is no precedent for one species changing into another.”

He thought on this for a while, mentally cursing his situation. Helen interrupted, stopping at first to re-order her words.

“There’s another –” her voice trailed off, “explanation...”

“Which is?” Nigel prompted, ignoring the beads of sweat forming on his hair line. “Dammit woman, tell me what it is!”

“Uncontrolled mutation,” she shot back. “Cancer.”

“I’m afraid our only choice is to wait,” said James, “wait and see.”

Nigel threw his head back in despair and then said, “I want to look at the rats.”

 

* * *

 

After half an hour of intimate staring, James Watson was convinced that the intelligent rat was trying to communicate with him. The scruffy ball had run repeatedly back and forward inside the cage, pausing on each pass at the ominous lock holding the cage shut.

Next, it took its sharp claws and began to scratch and rustle about in the right hand corner of the cage. It became quite obsessed with this activity, repositioning itself, squeezed tightly against the wall. Finally James heard it – the quiet click of something as the rat dug.

James bent down, scanning under the edge of the cage door. There, at the underside of the corner was a brass pin holding the door in place. The rat scratched again and James watched as its claws brushed over the pin, knocking against it.

“Clever boy...” he whispered to it, placing his nose to the wire-fronted cage. The rat scampered over to him, staring back with huge black eyes. “But I’m afraid that I cannot help you. She...” he nodded over his shoulder in Helen’s direction, “would lock me up beside you if I tried.”

“James,” Helen had been watching him for some time now, out of the corner of her eye, “please – people will talk.”

He departed the cage with a wink and roamed back over to the experiment table which was now lit brightly by a huddle of candles around its far edge. Two of them were large and old, congealed with layers of dirty wax. Their wicks were rough, trimmed low to the wax and their flames danced wildly with the slightest passing of air.

“Research, gentlemen,” Helen unfolded a series of private correspondence and laid the envelopes on the table. “Courtesy of Nikola.”

They were elegant sketches. Drawings of creatures, layer for layer through their workings right down to the cleaned bones.

“There are pages missing,” noted James, sorting through the elegant numbers at the corners of each page.

“This is all he gave me,” Helen said. “I believe that these might help us understand your condition, Nigel.”

“Where the devil did he get all this from? Fine hand, decorative curves on the tails and ever so slight pauses between sentences. A female – I would go so far as to say that the author is a _lady_.”

“It is not a mystery to be solved, James,” she warned. “Would you be so kind as to put your observational skills to the matter at hand?”

Nigel leant over the papers as if to inspect them then diverted at the last moment, blowing sharply on the mountain of candles, expiring several of them. “Bright,” he said simply, and then took several of the letters away to study. “I think that I shall write my family, just in case.”

“Have you thought about a will?” James put carefully. Helen made a scornful sound beneath her breath but Nigel was not offended indeed, he was smiling more brilliantly than she had seen in weeks.

“Yes, James,” he grinned, “you can have my books there'll be all of hell to answer, namely my brother, if you try and strut off with the shelves that match.”

 

* * *

 

The pair of gentlemen left late that night. She lingered in the door, watching Nigel brave the softly lit street and James hail a coach from the corner beneath a streetlight. The seasons were changing with the cold of the evenings beginning to show a glint of tooth.

Exhausted, she fell into a deep sleep with the curtains drawn and her bedroom door locked. The windows rattled all through the night, jarring against the inconstant gusts of wind ripping the last Autumn leaves free.

They came for it that night. When she woke in the morning, the doors had been undone and the steps to the basement tainted with muddy footprints. She was not surprised to find the heavy wooden door kicked in, the lanterns overturned and the source blood absent.

The rats assembled themselves in a line along the cage, keenly observing as Helen stepped around the broken lamps and headed for the chest of drawers at the far end. There, she searched feverishly for Nikola’s letters but they were also gone. Her heart sank.

 

* * *

 

Nigel woke up screaming. The dormitory was dark – well before the approach of dawn into the window that Helen had cleared. James stirred in the bed opposite. He fumbled into action as the screaming subsided, fetching a match and striking it to the wick of the lantern on the floor beside his bed. He picked it up and blinked back sleep with bleary eyes.

“Nigel?” he asked worriedly, as shapes began to form in the soft light. Nigel’s bed was empty. Its sheets and pillows were piled oddly in a mound and as he inspected the rest of the room, he found that nobody was there.

Figuring it to be a reverie, James roused on himself and went to blow the flame out when Nigel’s voice spoke.

“Sorry to have woken you. Bad dream, ‘been having them since that night.”

James sat up straight and took a second, closer look at the Nigel’s empty bed. After a few quiet minutes, he whispered to the room, “Nigel?”

“No...” came the sharp, half mocking reply at once. “Karl Marx – of _course_ it’s me.”

“Where?”

“Where what?” replied Nigel, shrugging at the confused James.

Some truth dawned on James as he saw the sheets of Nigel’s bed stir, apparently of their own accord. “How are you feeling?” he inquired delicately, of the empty room.

“Much improved,” Nigel had not felt pain since he had gone to sleep that night.

James’s eyebrows furrowed. “Interesting...” he mused.

“How so?”

James tilted the wood-framed side mirror in Nigel’s direction. “You seem to be lacking a reflection,” he replied quietly, as Nigel shrieked again.

 


	15. Dampier's Notes

 

James tightened the cord of his dressing gown and then lit all the lamps in the dormitory. Next, he strode up to Nigel’s bed and prodded the air approximately where his friend should be. The ‘thin air’ yelped and then scowled loudly, lashing out with stubby fingers until James stepped back, hands raised, and apologised.

“Just checking.” James excused himself, retreating from Nigel’s grasp. “I-” he tried to speak but eventually settled on, “I am _speechless_.” He wasn’t quite sure what else he was to think. His friend’s skin had taken on the patterns of its surrounding, constantly shifting to match either the bed sheets or the paint-stripped wall behind. About the only thing remaining to prove Nigel’s existence was the shadow stretching out over the floor.

Nigel was taking the progression of his condition poorly. He had James’s mirror clasped tightly in his hands and persisted in moving it about, analysing himself from every angle. No matter how many ways he tried to see himself, Nigel had to admit that he simply _wasn’t there_.

“This is terrible!” he declared, tossing the mirror across the room where it hit the floor and shattered. Nigel looked expectantly at James but quickly realised that he would have to speak if he wanted attention.

“What do you expect me to do about this?” James replied, tucking his hands into his dressing gown pockets. “It is the middle of the night. Sleep on it, and we will think of something in the morning.”

“You aren’t _serious_ ,” Nigel tucked the sheets around his legs. It had become cold of a night now – bitterly so. “I can’t just _forget about it_ and go back to sleep!” he protested. “I’m in- _god-damn_ -visible!”

“Then you best get used to it,” snapped James sharply.

Nigel’s resemblance to the background was not perfect. Whenever he moved it took a fraction of a second for his skin to catch up to the change which meant that when moving the wall seemed to lag. However, when perfectly still as he was now, you could not pick him even when you knew where to look. He was like one of those horrid insects that could make themselves into sticks and leaves. Is that what he was reduced to now, an insect?

“We wait ‘till morning,” James insisted, folding himself back into bed. “Then I will provide you with all the assistance you require. I swear it. You shall have my undivided attention.”

*~*~*

It was an exceptionally long, awkward silence. None of them were sure what to say or do and it seemed that James’s idea of ‘help’ was simply to deliver Nigel to Helen’s doorstep and absolve himself of the matter.

“He looks fine,” said Helen, finally.

It was true. Nigel sat in the oversized armchair with both hands clinging onto the leather arms like grim death. His clothes were oddly pulled about him as if he had dressed in a hurry and he was a bit pale. Helen at least admitted to that.

“Well it’s stopped now, ‘asn’t it!” Nigel scolded. He knew that he should be pleased with the sight of his skin but he knew that this present state would not last.

“I assure you it is true,” confirmed James, standing by the fireplace. There were a few hot coals left glowing from the previous night. “I swear, when we set out this morning he was a walking suit – nothing more.”

“She doesn’t believe us,” hissed Nigel, reclining into the chair. “I told you this would happen. We should have come when it first started.”

*~*~*

John was alarmed by the sudden turn of his head as a hurrying passer-by caught the edge of his shoulder. He scowled at once, looking for an apology which he realised would never come as the short man hurried off down the morning street, weaving between the high-hats.

He was about to turn and continue on to his lodgings when he felt his breast pocket and found it light. The miscreant, whomever he was, had taken his purse and papers. With no choice, John dodged two old gentlemen calmly and then launched into a pursuit of the creature he could just catch sight of in the distance.

It was a noble pursuit spanning many Oxford blocks. At times John felt that he was within arm’s reach of the man and could make out the flurry of heat to his cheeks, perspiration sticking his hair to the broad forehead and the darkening collar of his coat. The hat had long ago departed him, lost somewhere in the street behind as the pair took a turn around the busy corner and found themselves directly in front of the university gates.

“Stop!” John cried out, as the assailant pushed through the iron gates (which were as yet unopened) and dashed along the path leading to the main doors. John could not understand the man’s sense, for surely the university was a trap for any thief to enter.

In the straight, the man was quick and reached the door with extra time to breathe. The heavy wooden things, ornately carved and difficult to open had just begun to close when John slammed his hand firmly against them and heaved them open once again.

To his great distress, the foyer was empty. Without students pattering through it, the room felt harsh and cold with little love shared by the swirls of marble. He had all but lost hope of pursuit when a distant slamming door set him back on the trail. The thief scaled the main staircase, springing along the passage to the old section of the library which was also shut up at this early hour. The doors had been forced and were easily re-opened. Once inside John’s eyes trailed across the intricate networks of shelves that were lit only by the morning sun coming through the windows. This effect cast long shadows through the room where one could easily sneak.

He spent the next two hours – until the librarian shrieked in horror at the damage, trying to find the thief but there was no trace of him unless he had made himself into a book.

*~*~*

_A great plane of sand stretched out in front of him. It was neither brown nor red but some shade that couldn’t settle in the morning light. His body was freezing. The cold twisted into his limbs and turned his sinews rigid. It wasn’t until he felt the rising sun behind him that he felt his joints shift and his legs able propel up over the ridge and down the other side of the dune._

_There was a line of shadows following him. As they drew closer – gaining on him, he realised that they were caused by a struggling group of woman and children. Their exhaustion had wrenched their faces into soulless masks which traipsing endlessly toward the horizon though it always seemed to stretch out of reach._

_They were running from their past. An entire civilisation had taken foot and fled and he was among them – leading them. A great sorrow washed over him. The only thing that awaited them was a slow, drawn out death which he moved them ever forward toward._

Nikola gasped, awaking in a fit of tears and despair. He had been there – marching across some wasteland with a child clinging to his shoulder.

“God...” he whispered, catching sight of the first weak beams of morning light through the open window. His breath swirled up through the air, condensing in the cold. It had been more than a dream. It was as if he had actually been standing in the desert, conscious that he would die soon. That desperate sense of hopeless determination took a while to shift as he gathered up the blankets and buried himself, trying to return to sleep

Eventually he gave in. Dressing quickly, he washed his hands again and again before making to the library where he sneaked a few books under his arm.

The librarian, old lady that she was, watched him suspiciously – craning her neck every now and then in his direction. Nikola fitted himself into the rock-lined window sill which looked out across the oval and onto the main gates. The grass was starting to die off and its brown threads had a pink lustre about them in the early light. Two pigeons picked over the expanse, fluttering at each other in jealous love.

He had a heavy book in his lap. Toward the end of it, he found a passage on the great ancient land of the early rulers. His finger slipped along the map from the old city of _Cairo_ west, toward _Minqar Abd an Nabi_. Where expired rivers baked to dust, the old map showed nothing but unnamed desert – poorly drawn. Still, he could not shake the feeling that he had _been_ there, touched its sand and watched the sun rise over its horrid scene.

“ _To ne može biti...”_ he whispered. _‘It cannot be!’_

*~*~*

“What of this other complaint,” offered Helen, unsure of how to proceed with no symptoms apparent, “is it possible to examine you again?

Nigel was reluctant at first but did not desire to be turned away. As much as he despised the fact, he suspected Helen to be the better medic of them all. Her father’s blood was strong in her veins and sometimes even, he could see a bit of him in her eyes. His own father, Professor Samuel Griffin, had been a great friend to the elder Magnus. They shared a friendship whilst on the Oxford board but Griffin, like all Griffins throughout their generations, were wise with money and reluctant to watch it drain into endless pits. Nigel did not know of Helen’s knowledge on the matter but it had been Professor Griffin who first suggested that Magnus’s funds be cut in favour of the more lucrative organisation – the Cabal.

They laid him out on the table in the lab – a thing which disturbed Nigel greatly given the morbidity of the object. It was cold and hard beneath his bare back and brought alive all the hairs of his skin so that they stuck up against the air. Helen did not seem to take much note of him as she approached with her hands covered by a pair of cotton gloves. In so many ways, she looked like a magician about to conjure secrets from the world before their eyes.

“Lay still,” she cautioned, as she pressed down on his chest, feeling his ribs one by one before moving to his stomach. Soon he noticed that she was counting, carefully inventorying his innards in a manner that would have disturbed him had he not expressly allowed this.

Then she paused, feeling again and again the same area of his side. As she prodded, he felt a sharp pain.

“Intriguing,” she said curiously, digging further into his side creating great, stabbing, violent pains that racked the centre of his body.

“Careful – Helen,” James lifted a hand towards her arm. She avoided him easily muttering, _‘Yes, yes, James – don’t fuss around me.’_

Then she did something that surprised the others. Without explanation, Helen ducked out of the room and hurried through her father’s office and into the main hallway where she quickly began the ascent of the stairs toward the attic. Since its uncovering, she had not bothered to lock it. It had become another dead secret between her and her father which no longer required breath or keys.

Once inside the dark room, and after lighting a single lantern, she fetched a single precious letter from beneath a heavy book. It was the sole survivor of Nikola’s collection. On it was an impressive piece of ink-work. Stretching to the very edges of the page, which were of the thinnest paper, was detail of a sea creature. The hand that had written details along the margins was not the same as the one whom had written Nikola the letters. This was a piece from a coveted collection – which is why Helen chose to protect it.

A small life-like sketch in the bottom corner represented the octopus in its pre-autopsy glory with the ever-so-slightest humour in its eyes and twist of its tentacles which curled into a border. Beside it was the signature, W. Dampier.

She returned to Nigel who had now straightened and begun engaging in harsh words with his companion. Helen interrupted them, presenting the document.

“It is as I suspected,” she said, thoroughly pleased with herself. She drew them to a detail of the creature’s skin which under extreme magnification showed sacks of something which the detailed key explained were responsible for the animal’s camouflage. She directed them further to an addendum which wrote, _‘other examples of this cause are the contractions of specific muscles which can alter the pigment of the skin’._

Without warning, Helen sharply stuck her hand into Nigel’s stomach. He winced, contorting his face in sudden pain – though the others couldn’t see it. With a wicked grin upon her lips, Helen surveyed the bodiless suit which writhed about on her table.

“Do you require a repetition, or are we convinced of the lump’s purpose?”

“Quite convinced,” hissed the air where Nigel sat.

“Indeed, indeed...” repeated James, finding a new sense of respect for the woman.

“And they have taken the rest of the letters?” Nigel asked, as the pain grew less and his skin gradually found its form, first in waning patches but eventually settling into a solid covering.

“Everything, I am afraid,” she lied. Helen had saved the smallest of samples – a single vial, once fluid ounce; practically nothing...

“Am I dying?” asked Nigel. He replaced his white shirt and began latching it closed. Helen shook her head kindly. He didn’t think that he would ever see compassion drip from her in his direction but in this case it overflowed and spilled into the corners of her eyes.

“No,” she said firmly. “You are very much alive.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> William Dampier (1651 - 1715) was an English explorer and Australia's first natural historian. He was the first man to circumnavigate the world three times. His detailed drawings of the new world and its creatures influenced James Cook and notably, Charles Darwin in their understanding of the world. Despite his immense talents and sense of adventure, he was not always a kind or just man, sweeping through the courtrooms after his voyages. The date and circumstances of his death remain a mystery.


End file.
